17. The Courts Of The Lord'S House ~ 9 2 1
BOOK TWO
17. THE COURTS OF THE LORD'S HOUSE
~ 9 2 1 17.1 (6:36) And he built the inner court with three rows of polished stones and one row of cedar beams. Of the inner court he speaks briefly; of the outer one he seems to say nothing at all. But mention is made of both in the Chronicles where it is written as follows: He also made the court of the priests, and a great hall, and doors in the hall, which he covered with bronze.' But the inner court, which is called the court of the priests because the priests and Levites ministered in it, was completely surrounded by the temple but on the east, from where one entered the temple, it was much further removed from the temple than on the other three sides, because, of course, it was on that side, i.e. at the front of the temple, that the sacred functions were performed. There it was that the bronze altar for offering victims to the Lord was situated, there the ten wash-basins for washing these victims, and there the Bronze Sea for washing the hands and feet of the priests when they went to perform their duties. Moreover, this court was three cubits high, as Josephus relates,2 to exclude the others from admittance into the temple and show that this was permissible to the priests alone; and there was a door on the east side which was the point to which the people used to bring in their victims and sacrifices to be taken from there by the priests and brought forward to the altar. But of the outer court which the Chronicles call the great hall, Josephus writes as follows: Outside of this temple he built another court in quadrangular form, erecting very large wide porticoes3 in it and setting up high spacious gates at the four quarters of the globe, each facing one of the quarters from the four comers where he put the golden doors; and a little further on (he writes), Into this sacred precinct would enter all the people who had fuljilled the requirements of ritual purity and observance of the prescriptions of the law.
2 Paralip49 cf. Josephus Ant. 8.3.9.
Here 'porticoes' is the word used in the Loeb translation to render the Greek word
SlOdS.
The Latin of this sentence is: In hoc sacmrium omnes popdi quibus purgatw et observatio legititnorum inemt inhoibant. As it stands the clause quibus. . . incmt
BEDE: ON THE TEMPLE
17.2 Now, in point of fact, as he mentions himself in his commentary on the Psalms, Cassiodorus S e n a t ~ r , ~ in the picture of the temple which he put in the pandect6 distinguished three ranks in these colonnades, i.e. placing the first outside the court of the priests in a square, the second similarly outside the innermost colonnade and surrounding it, (and) likewise the last one on each side of the previous colonnades all the way round. And in this way the temple was walled all round by the protection of structures of three kinds: a paving of marble in the open between the individual structures; and the walls of the houses on the inside i.e. those facing the temple, built in the form of a colonnade, but the outer ones solid; and so it was that the entire architectural configuration of the temple was judiciously organized to correspond to the differences in rank. For the high priest used to go into the Holy of Holies, the purified priests together with the Levites into the temple itself, the purified and non-purified together with the Levites and cantors into the court, the purified men of Juda into the innermost court of the greater hall, standing and praying in the open
[I931 cannot be translated literally into tolerable English.
I have felt it necessary to paraphrase but have done so in the light of the Greek text of Josephus which turns neatly into English without recasting: 'all of the people who were distinguished by reason of their purity of life and observance of the prescriptions of the law.'
The name 'Senator' is usually written like this as an integral part of Cassiodorus's name which is rendered in English as Cassiodorus Senator rather than as'the Senator
Cassiodorus'; Romans had two basic names, a pmenomen or personal name and a nomen the name of their gens, i.e. their clan or family group. In addition they were given extra personal names, some denoting physical peculiarities (Naso), others occupations (Pictor), others public offices (Censorinus or Senator). cf. OCD S.V.
NOMEN. cf. Cassiodorus Exp. in Ps. 86.1 CCSL 98:789, 40-43. The words 'in the pandect' translate Bede's phrase in pandecre. The nominative formpandecres, is a transliteration of the Greek xav6inrqc (lit. 'an all-receiver', from T&U = 'all' + C i x o p a ~ = 'I receive'). It was 'a book containing everything'. a sort of encyclopaedia, and in Christian parlance it was used to denote the Bible, just as the word bibliorheca, 'a library' or 'collection of books', was used by St Jerome. Here it means Cassiodorus's complete and therefore large (hence Coder Grandior) copy of the entire Latin bible, now lost, which apparently Ceolfrith brought back from Rome to WearmoutNJarrow and Bede saw with his own eyes. So there were close links between it and the well-known
Coda Amiarinur, now at the Laurentian Library in Florence, a copy of Jerome's Latin Vulgate (i.e. popular) version which was made at Wearmouth/Jarrow and was being carried to the Pope in Rome by Abbot Ceolfrith when he died in northern
Italy. For more on the Coder Amiafinus and its relationship to the Coder Gmndior cf. Bruce-Mitford, (1969).
BOOK TWO
air, if it was fine, if not, going into the colonnades nearest them, the purified women of Juda into the outer court, the gentiles, and the Jews who had recently come from the gentiles, into the outermost court until the sixth day of purification. These distinctions which we have found in Cassiodorus's picture we have taken care to note here briefly, reckoning that he learnt them from the Jews of old and that such a learned man had no intention of proposing as a model for our reading what he himself had not first found to be true.
17.3 These are the places recorded in the last gradual psalm which begins thus: Come, bless the Lord, all you servants of the Lord who stand in the house of the Lord, in the courts of the house of our God.'
In these colonnades Jeremiahs and other prophets, in them too the Lord and the apostles, used to preach the word to the people. In one of these the Lord sat teaching when the adulterous woman was brought before him for judgement by the captious Phari~ees;~ in them he found the ones who were selling and buying sheep and cattle and doves and drove them with their wares out of the temple.l0 In them
Peter and John found the lame man and healed him and brought him with them as they went in to pray." In them the whole multitude of the people were praying when, as Zachary was offering incense, the angel appeared to him at the altar of incense and informed him on the birth of the precursor of the Lord.12 However, these courts with their colonnades could not hide the view of the temple from those who looked at it from a distance because the place where the temple was situated was much higher than the place where the colonnades had been erected. For as Josephus writes,13 the outermost buiMings of the courts, although they had been erected to a height of four hundred cubits, reached only to the top of the mountain on which the temple was built. l4 Ps. 133:l cf. Jr 1914 ' cf. Jn 8:2 lo cf. Mt 21:12; Jn 2:14 l1 cf. Ac3:18 l2 cf. Lk 1:5ff l 3 Josephus Anf 8.3.9 l4 This quotation from Josephus's Anfiquiries, while it reflects substantially the original
Greek of the passage cited, does not render that original exactly as we have it today.
BEDE: ON THE TEMPLE
17.4 These items of information on the structure of the temple, in our opinion, should indeed be passed on to the keen reader. But among them let us seek out figures of whatever mysteries sacred scripture has thought fit to relate and the rest let us use purely for historical knowledge. The temple building inside the court of the priests, then, represents the life of the perfect and those of sublime sanctity in the holy Church, that is to say, of those who by the excellence of their virtues are wont to approach the Lord and also provide guidance to others in the way of salvation by word and work. For the priest has got his name in Latin from the fact that he ought to offer sacred guidance to those lower than him. In the scriptures this name comprises not only the ministers of the altar, i.e. bishops and priests, but indeed all who are outstanding by reason of the loftiness of their good life and salutary teaching, and are of benefit not only to themselves but to a great many others as well. For while they offer their bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, l 5 they truly exercise the priestly ministry spiritually. After all, it was not just to bishops and priests alone but to all God's Church that the apostle
(1941 Peter was speaking when he said, But you are a chosen generation, a kingly priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possession. l6 And the ancient people of God were also singled out by the honour of this dignity as he himself said to Moses, Thus shall you say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel;17 and a little further on, And you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.
17.5 But the large hall which was outside the court of the priests and in which the whole multitude of the people was wont to worship or gather to hear the word, suggests figuratively the life and behaviour of the carnal in the holy Church to whom the Apostle says, But f, brethren, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as babes in Christ, I fed you with milk, not solid food. l9 These are aptly denoted by the great hall because without any doubt the One must conclude either that it is a paraphrastic rendering which omits what is not relevant to the author's point, or that it is based on a different text from that now available to us. l5 Rm 12:l l6 1 P2:9 l7 Ex 193 l8 Ex 19:6 l9 1 Co3:l-2
BOOK TWO
number of such people in the holy Church is far greater than that of the perfect, but the more they outnumber them, the lower they are in merit. Hence it is fitting that this great hall, even though it holds the majority, does not, for all that, admit them to the inner parts of the gilded temple, or to the service of the altar or even to the priests' court itself, because even though all the carnal and weak who are still in the Church have a share in the lot of the elect through the merit of pure faith and of piety which is dedicated to God, nevertheless, they are far from being fit to put on a par with those who have convincingly proved their fidelity. For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ wrought through me, to win the obedience of the gentiles, by word and deed;2o and again, I have fought a good fight; I have finished my course; I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousnesx2'
17.6 The common people, it is true, came as far as the court of the priests, brought their sacrifices as far as this door and, when these had been accepted by the priest and offered on the altar, followed them with their eyes. Moreover, they directed their gaze from a distance into the temple itself when it was opened but they had no permission to enter the court of the priests. However, they cried to the Lord from the lower areas of (the temple) because the simplicity even of the carnal in the Church is not spurned by the Lord when they offer up with faith such prayers as they can. They direct their eyes from a distance into the temple of God when they earnestly rejoice in learning about and admiring the life of the sublime, and embrace with the affection of pious veneration those whom they cannot follow in the imitation of their virtue. They see the priests' sacrificial victims being consumed by sacred fire on the altar because they recognize that the great performance of august works is graciously accepted by the Lord through the Holy Spirit. They also bring their sacrificial offerings to the court of the priests to be offered to the Lord by them, while, in doing the good things which are of greater worth, they are encouraged by the exhortation of greater and more learned people and are commended (to God) by their intercession. They also offer their sacrifices to the priests to be commended by them to God whenever, with a view to the supreme reward, they give the [I951 2o Rm 15:18
21 2Tm4:7-8
BEDE: O N THE TEMPLE
necessities of this world, which they themselves have in abundance, to any of the saints in need, as the Lord urges when he says, Make friends foryourselves of the mammon of iniquity, that when you fail they may receive you into everlasting dwellings.22 And whosoever; he says, shall give one of these little ones a cup of cold water to drink only in the name of a disciple, amen, I say to you, he shall not lose his reward;23 and so one and the same person takes up the sacrifices of both on the altar of God when the Lord judges the alms of the rich by which they minister to the saints together with the great virtues of the same saints worthy of his regard and reward. Therefore, the multitude of the believers, who left their possessions and served the Lord with one heart and mind, are the temple of God and the place inside the court of the priests specially consecrated to him.
17.7 Again the great hall and those praying in it in a circle round the court of the priests are a figure of those of the gentiles who were believers in Syria and Antioch and the other provinces and cities24 on whom the apostles and elders who were in Jerusalem imposed no further burden than that they refrain from that which has been offered to idols and from blood and from things strangled and from forni~ation.~~ However, they wished that the poor among the saints who were in Jerusalem be supported by their offerings so that those who put their worldly possessions at the disposal of these poor people could become sharers in their spiritual wealth.26 But Barnabas and Paul with their companions who received these people's offerings and brought them to Jerusalem, are the priestswho accepted the sacrifices and brought them to the altar of the Lord for consecration, because they brought the gifts of their charity to the saints who were obliged to pray for them. Therefore, the court, which was situated midway between the place for the common people and that for the priests, signifies the division which separates the carnal ones in the holy
Church, who indeed are only beginners in the way of righteousness, from the pinnacle of the perfect, which was determined not by lot but by the greatness of their merits. For the carnal ones feel it is
/196] 22 Lk 16:9
23 Mt 1042 24 cf. Ac 15:22-29 25 Ac21-25 26 cf. Rm 15:26-27