Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem, Israel

Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem, Israel (pp 211-220)Page 1 of 14

THE GALAXY ON EARTH: A TRAVELER'S GUIDE TO THE PLANET'S VISIONARY GEOGRAPHY

RICHARD LEVITON

HAMPTON ROADS PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC.

by Richard Leviton

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The Dome of the Rock is a Muslim monument on the TempleMount, which is a huge enclosed platform on the top of a small rise in the Old City of Jerusalem called MountMoriah. The Temple Mount was called in Hebrew Har BaBayit, which means "the Mountain of the House," as in God's House; in Arabic Haram es-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary); and it is a trapezoid measuring 1.5 million square feet or 500,000 square yards and occupying forty-five acres.

As impressive as it is in its own right, the TempleMount (elevation: 2,220 feet) is the setting for an even more impressive jewel. The center of attention and the focus of the majority of the site's sacrality is an oblong rock, a natural outcropping, that measures fifty-six by forty-two feet. It's called the Foundation Stone, or in Hebrew, Even HaShetiyah, said to have been planted here at the beginning of Creation and taken by God from His Throne of Glory.

Thus Jerusalem's holiest spot is a rock that the ancient Jews saw as the center of the Earth, the axis of the universe, the pivot that joined Heaven and Earth, and Earth with the primeval chaos beneath it. "It was the root of heaven, the lid of hell, the place through which souls spring up when ascending from hell to heaven.

Ever since the seventh century, the Muslim Dome of the Rock (Arabic: Kubbat as-Sakrah) has stood directly over this unusual rock, framing it in an octagonal temple topped with a golden dome (sixty feet wide), its inner surface a sublime kaleidoscope of arabesques in gilt and plaster, arching one hundred feet above the rock.

The outer octagonal wall (each section sixty feet long) is encased in marble and covered with numerous blue tiles; this wall encircles two concentric ambulatories separated by an arcade in between. "The elegant building erected by Abdel Malek, one of the most beautiful in the whole of the Middle East, was intended primarily to shield the holy rock, Es-Sakhra"; the Muslims called it Qubbet el-Sakhra.

The Foundation Stone is encircled by 16 arches supported by pillars that came from former Jerusalem churches destroyed by the Persians in their occupation of the city in 614 A.D. Visitors have likened the visual effect to that of a mountain of supernatural light or to a glittering gold Sun whose light offers a succession of shades and intensities during the day.

"The atmosphere of beauty that prevails in the Dome of the Rock is like a distant announcement of the destiny of paradise." You find yourself there in your finite human state at the "very heart of the Beauty and the Life of God, of which this mausoleum is the parable." Everything about the monument's construction "integrates" you into the higher life."'

Earlier in history, the two Temples of Jerusalem occupied the TempleMount and similarly enclosed the Foundation Stone. Portentous mythic and spiritual events happened here from the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions, and the three religions have claimed the site as their own with various justifications and legendary attributions of jurisdiction.

HISTORY AND ARCHEOLOGY

Following architectural plans handed down by God to Moses, King Solomon organized the construction of the first Temple of Jerusalem, which was completed in 957 B.C. It was destroyed by the Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar in 586 B.C., then reconstructed by 515 B.C. During the reign of the Roman Herod, the Second Temple of Jerusalem was enlarged and the famous Western Wall (the "Wailing Wall") was built; part of it is still extant, the only physical remains of the Temple.

In 70 A.D., the Romans demolished the Temple of Jerusalem, and Emperor Hadrian established a temple to the God Jove (the Greek Jupiter). This in turn was destroyed by invading Byzantines; later the Persians occupied the city; then in 638 A.D., Jerusalem was captured by the Muslim Caliph Umar 1, six years after the death of Muhammad, the Muslim prophet. Umar "cleansed" the TempleMount, called in Arabic Haram al Sharif and dedicated the site to Muslim worship.

The Dome of the Rock was built in 687, some fifty years after Muhammad's death. For about ninety years after the Christian capture of Jerusalem in the Crusades in 1099, the Dome of the Rock was converted to a Christian shrine and called Templum Domini, "Temple of the Lord."

Later it reverted to Muslim control, and today it is the third holiest place (a shrine or monument, not a mosque) in Islam, after the Ka'aba in Mecca and the Prophet Muhammad's mosque in Medina.

MYTH AND LEGEND

The dossier of attributions to the TempleMount and Foundation Stone is awesome. The Stone, which came from God's Throne of Glory, was set as a lid upon the tehom, the subterranean waters of chaos, similar to the Sumerian and Babylonian concept of apsu. Just as Babylon was built upon the bab-apsu and was the "Gate of Apsu," so the Foundation Stone covers the Mouth of the tehom, suppressing the waters of Chaos that preceded Creation.

The Hebrew word tehom means an abyss (such as a surging mass of subterranean water) or an uproar of waters in violent commotion or waves in turbid violence, making a great noise. Tehom implies the deep (as in the principal sea or underground water source) and fountains of the great deep, and it implies chaos, mystery, depth, and power.

In a larger sense, tehom signifies the watery precreation abyss, wildly swirling whirlpools, the layer of water underlying the physical Earth, and the formless waste or primordial substance from which God created the world. This primeval water, if not stemmed, would erupt from apertures in the land and flood the entire Earth. The Biblical Flood is understood to have been produced by an "uncorking" of the tehom, of the waters from deep below.

The site of the Temple of Jerusalem, with the Stone as its center, was believed to be the precise place out of which the Flood waters erupted and back into which they receded when the Flood was over. Then the great rock was set upon the opening into the abyss, keeping the Flood waters penned in. The Stone of Foundation was an omphalos, or primordial navel, and also the first solid object created by God and "placed by God amidst the as yet boundless fluid of the primeval waters."

Legend says God then built up the Earth concentrically around this Stone just as the body of an embryo is grown from its navel. "In the same manner in which the body of the embryo receives its nourishment through the navel, so the whole Earth too receives the waters that nourish it from this Navel."

The term tehom is close to the Hebrew words Tohu and Bohu, which are used to describe conditions of original chaos preceding Creation. Tehom (a word generated by adding the suffix 11 m" to Tohu) also signifies a primitive sea monster of the same name, possibly similar to or the same as Leviathan and the Babylonian Tiamat. Bohu, with the same suffix, becomes Behom and Behomot, as in Job's Behemoth, the dry-land counterpart.

Tehom, argue Robert Graves and Raphael Patai, was originally a proper name, and Tehomot is the Hebrew version of Mother Tiamat "beloved by the God Apsu, whose name developed from the older Sumerian Abzu; and Abzu was the imaginary sweet-water abyss from which Enki, God of Wisdom, emerged.

The Stone is said to have come from the Garden of Eden and like Man, resides on Earth in exile. It was placed here at the center of Creation not only to seal up the tehom, but to distribute the spirit of Creation out into the world. Adam's mortal body was said to have been created in part from the dust of this Stone. The idea was that this would enable him always to carry with him a memory of his divine origin.

A variation on this myth says it was the dust from the place of Adam's atonement and that at the end of time, all humankind, Adam's progeny, would assemble in Jerusalem for repentance, forgiveness, and salvation on the pivotal and consummate day of Resurrection.

Underneath the Foundation Stone in a small cavern or deep hollow is the Bir el-Anveh, the Well of Souls, accessed by a physical stairway.

In the Well, it is said you can hear the voices of the Dead and the rushing sounds of the waters of Paradise, and sometimes the two mingled. Legend says the Ark of the Covenant was hidden in a sealed and secret passageway beneath the Bir el-Anveh for protection when the Temple was destroyed. Some say the Ark still remains there, guarded by spirits and demons.

Incidentally, although Muslim authorities have proscribed excavations under the TempleMount, archeologists are reasonably certain the space is threaded with a vast network of underground substructures, such as the vaulted halls known as Solomon's Stables, as well as water reservoirs and cisterns.

Jewish sources suggest that the Stone arrived on Earth at the time of the first prophets and that it was called Even HaShetiyah because the foundation of the world had been established with its placement. Further, it was inscribed with the "Ineffable Name," the secret and unpronounceable name of God, the power of which keeps the tehorn from overflowing and flooding the human world. The knowledge of this Name makes one the master over nature and life and death.

During the time of Joseph, the son of Jacob who was the patriarch of the twelve tribes of Israel, God held the Even HaShetiyah in His hand and warned Joseph that if he slept with Zuleika, "I will cast away this stone upon which the earth is founded and the world will fall to ruin." When Solomon's Temple of Jerusalem was built, the Holy of Holies, which housed the precious Ark of the Covenant, was set directly over the Even HaShetiyah at the very center of all.

Here is the mystical logic: The construction of the Earth began at the center with the Even HaShetiyah at Jerusalem in Israel because the Holy Land is at the central point of the surface of the Earth; Jerusalem occupies the central point of Palestine; the original Temple of Jerusalem stands at the center of the Holy City; in the Temple sanctuary the Hekal is the center; the Ark of the Covenant occupies the center of the Hekal, built on the foundation stone, which thus is at the center of the Earth. "Thence issued the first ray of light, piercing to the Holy Land, and from there illuminating the whole earth.""'

Of further significance is the fact that the Holy of Holies of the Temple was the dwelling place for the Shekinah, the Holy Spirit expressed as a feminine presence and the core of Jewish mysticism. The Shekinah, which means "resting" or "dwelling," was understood to be the feminine aspect of God and the way God manifests in the physical world, sometimes likened to God's face or wings.

The Shekinah is that part of God closest to the human, material world, and like the Jews (and all humankind), it wanders the world in exile from the Godhead. The Glory of Israel, her bridegroom, would periodically enter this marriage chamber and join his consort, the Shekinah, for the benefit of all Israel, its people and its lands. All of this glory was over the Stone.

In Jewish religious history the Even HaShetiyah was the site of three other crucial events. First, it was the altar upon which Abraham was about to sacrifice his son Isaac at God's request.

Second, it was the site designated by God for King David to make reparations for his offense against the Lord in demonstrating his lack of trust by proposing to take a census of the Jews. God responded to this blasphemy by releasing a plague that killed seventy thousand Israelites, but at the last moment instructed the Angel of Death to spare Jerusalem; this Angel was standing by the threshing-place of Araunah the Jebusite onthe summit of MountMoriah. David was commanded to construct an altar at this precise spot as a commemoration. In so doing, David reaffirmed Abraham's original covenant between God and the Jews.

It is also reported that when King David prayed for Jerusalem to be spared from the plague, he saw angels ascending a golden ladder from the threshing floor into the sky, putting away their swords of death as they went. "From this, David understood that the summit of the hill was the point of access to heaven and the place where the Temple must be built.

The third had to do with the patriarch Jacob's famous pillow and dream. In preparation for sleeping at the Temple of Jerusalem (some versions say he slept at Luz, just outside Jerusalem), Jacob took twelve stones from the same altar upon which his father, Isaac, had lain bound as a sacrifice.

The twelve stones (representing the twelve tribes of Israel, not yet born) came together and formed a single stone, which Jacob then used as a pillow. In a magnificent dream, Jacob beheld the course of the world's history, including the future destruction of this temple, and he saw a ladder stretching from where he lay to the highest point in Heaven; angels were ascending and descending this heavenly ladder in a continuous procession.

Jacob, upon awaking, took the stone and set it up like a pillar and anointed it with oil he had received from Heaven. God sank this anointed stone so deep into the abyss that it could serve as the center of the Earth and the world's navel, to be known as the Even HaShetiyah. In other words, Jacob's "pillow" and the base of what is often called Jacob's Ladder, was the Foundation Stone. This site is also known as Bethel, "Gate or House of Heaven" or "House of the God El."

A similar night journey took place here sometime before 622. That traveler was the Muslim prophet, Muhammad. He was conveyed from near the Ka'aba in Mecca in Saudi Arabia to the TempleMount in Jerusalem on a celestial winged creature called al-Buraq (Lightning), which was a horse with the face of a woman and a peacock's tail.

From the Foundation Stone, Muhammad ascended the Ladder of Lights through the Seven Heavens, accompanied by innumerable angels and witnessed by many ascended prophets, most notably the Archangel Gabriel. Muhammad was brought before the Divine Presence as the experiential pinnacle of his journey and informed that men should recite prayers fifty times daily.

His remarkable mystical excursion is known as the al-Miraj, the "Ascent," or al-Isra, the "Night Journey." Though the Temple had once been the sublime meeting place between humans and divinity, since its sack by the Romans and its near dismemberment it had lain in ruins, both physical and spiritual, for centuries prior to Muhammad's reanimation of the site. The Foundation Stone is said to bear the imprint of Muhammad's footprint as he pushed off from the site, and that of the Archangel Gabriel, who put his foot down to restrain the Stone from following the prophet on his Night Journey.

Of course all Jerusalem has been considered holy for millennia, perhaps for as long as it has been occupied, which, archeology informs us, is at least five thousand years. It's a holy city with many names: from 1,200 to 1,000 B.C., it was Jebus, or ir hayebusi, the city of the Jebusites, a hilltop fortress captured by King David in the tenth century B.C. It was Tsiyon (Zion), a word that suggests an earthly paradise modeled after a heavenly archetype, perhaps the celestial Jerusalem.

The city was also Yir'eh-Shalem, which has a complex meaning. In the largest sense, the name connotes "the place where later God will show (yir'eh), or make known on earth, the fullness and perfection (shalem) of what is above.""' Jerusalem has been known as Yerushalem (a singular form), Yerushalayim (a plural form), Ruschalim (Egyptian), Urusalimmu (Assyrian), Hierosolyma (Greek), and Jerosolyma or Hierosalem (Christian).