Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 1.djvu/216

 îoS A History of Art in Sardinia and Jud.k; temple of Herod ; but as in all essentials it did not differ from the first building, we shall refer to them when necessary. Josephus may be followed, allowing for occasional exaggeration, in all matters pertaining to the third edifice ; but as regards the second and first, his information was in no way better than ours. In his time the men of the Great Synagogue completed the revision of the Scriptures, and formed an authorized version of the Bible which has been universally adopted by all Christian denominations. 1 One of the first results which followed the formation of the sacred canon was to throw discredit upon the books that had been rejected. The contempt with which they were regarded caused them to be neglected or forgotten ; and, when ferreted out, it was only that they might be destroyed. Thus it came about that old fragments, and even complete works of incommensurable historical interest, found their way to the cheesemonger or waste-paper basket. 2 The Targums, on the other hand — a Chaldee word, "to trans- late," " explain " — are a translation and commentary of the Bible 1 Dr. Heinrich Bloch, in a learned dissertation respecting the merits and demerits of Josephus as an historian, proves that, despite all that has been said to the contrary, he was thoroughly familiar with Hebrew, and that when he wrote his work he used both the original text and the Septuagint, notably the latter. For as he wrote in Greek — a language he had acquired late in life — it was a saving of time and labour. On the other hand, his deep knowledge of traditional lore, or teaching of the elders, which formed the staple curriculum in the schools of Babylonia and Palestine, much of which is embodied in the Apocrypha, notably the Talmuds, enabled him to supply here and there a name or a gloss, not found in the canonical version. His method, too, of marshalling out his facts, savours of the rationalistic school of the Alexandrians, who hoped in that way to render their peculiar traditions more acceptable to their heathen converts. 2 Bloch's judgment upon Josephus seems to us sound and equitable; but we think that he has scarcely made sufficient allowance for the individual proclivities of the writer, whose aim was to astonish with the recital of Jewish magnificence and the wonders attached to the history of his people, so as to win for them respect and admiration. His proneness to exaggerate is manifest when he states that the covered masonry was equal to the height of the building above ground. A glance at the platform of Moriah, or the plans representing it, will show the absurdity of the assertion. The rock here is everywhere near the surface, thus precluding deep foundations ; whilst his ignorance of architectural constructiveness is apparent when he assigns to them exactly the same dimensions of length and breadth as to the building they supported. It is possible however that, writing from memory, he may have confounded the foundations of the sanctuary proper with those of the wall of enclosure. In that case his statement, far from being exaggerated, would fall within reality.