The Temple Warning inscription, also known as the Temple Balustrade inscription or the Soreg inscription,[2] is an inscription that hung along the balustrade outside the Sanctuary of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. Two of these tablets have been found.[3] The inscription was a warning to pagan visitors to the temple not to proceed further. Both Greek and Latin inscriptions on the temple's balustrade served as warnings to pagan visitors not to proceed under penalty of death.[3][4]
Temple Warning Inscription | |
---|---|
Material | Limestone |
Writing | Greek |
Created | c. 23 BCE – 70 CE[1] |
Discovered | 1871 |
Present location | Istanbul Archaeology Museums |
Identification | 2196 T |
A complete tablet was discovered in 1871 by Charles Simon Clermont-Ganneau, in the ad-Dawadariya school just outside the al-Atim Gate to the Temple Mount, and published by the Palestine Exploration Fund.[1][5] Following the discovery of the inscription, it was taken by the Ottoman authorities, and it is currently in the Istanbul Archaeology Museums. A partial fragment of a less well made version of the inscription was found in 1936 by J. H. Iliffe during the excavation of a new road outside Jerusalem's Lions' Gate; it is held in the Israel Museum.[1][6][7]
Two tablets have been found, one complete, and the other a partial fragment with missing sections, but with letters showing signs of the red paint that had originally highlighted the text.[4] It was described by the Palestine Exploration Fund in 1872 as being "very nearly in the words of Josephus".[8][9][10]
The inscription uses three terms referring to temple architecture:[11]
The tablet bears the following inscription in Koine Greek:
Original Greek | In minuscules with diacritics | Transliteration[12] | Translation[13] |
---|---|---|---|
ΜΗΘΕΝΑΑΛΛΟΓΕΝΗΕΙΣΠΟ
ΡΕΥΕΣΘΑΙΕΝΤΟΣΤΟΥΠΕ ΡΙΤΟΙΕΡΟΝΤΡΥΦΑΚΤΟΥΚΑΙ ΠΕΡΙΒΟΛΟΥΟΣΔΑΝΛΗ ΦΘΗΕΑΥΤΩΙΑΙΤΙΟΣΕΣ ΤΑΙΔΙΑΤΟΕΞΑΚΟΛΟΥ ΘΕΙΝΘΑΝΑΤΟΝ |
Μηθένα ἀλλογενῆ εἰσπο-
ρεύεσθαι ἐντὸς τοῦ πε- ρὶ τὸ ἱερὸν τρυφάκτου καὶ περιβόλου. Ὃς δ᾽ ἂν λη- φθῇ, ἑαυτῶι αἴτιος ἔσ- ται διὰ τὸ ἐξακολου- θεῖν θάνατον. |
Mēthéna allogenē eispo[-]
reúesthai entòs tou pe[-] rì tò hieròn trypháktou kaì peribólou. Hòs d'àn lē[-] phthē heautōi aítios és[-] tai dià tò exakolou[-] thein thánaton. |
No stranger is to enter
within the balustrade round the temple and enclosure. Whoever is caught will be himself responsible for his ensuing death. |
The identity of the hypothetical stranger/foreigner remains ambiguous. Some scholars believed it referred to all gentiles, regardless of ritual purity status or religion. Others argue that it referred to unconverted Gentiles since Herod wrote the inscription. Herod himself was a converted Idumean (or Edomite) and was unlikely to exclude himself or his descendants.[14]
Several forgeries were promptly prepared following the 1871 discovery.[15] Clermont-Ganneau was shown a similar artifact at the Monastery of St Saviour, which was later shown to be a forgery created by Martin Boulos.[16]
During work on the construction of a new road outside St. Stephen's Gate, Jerusalem, by the Municipality of Jerusalem, during December 1935, the remains of a vaulted building of late Roman or Byzantine date were found. Beneath this building was an unpretentious tomb-chamber, cut in the rock, with the (shallow) graves excavated in the floor; it was approached by a stairway in the familiar manner and yielded a number of pottery lamps of a mid-fourth-century A.D. type.' An apparently rebuilt wall belonging to the vaulted building (itself evidently later than the fourth-century tomb below) yielded a fragment of a stone bearing a Greek inscription, which, on examination, proved to be a second copy of the Greek text of the stelae erected around the inner court of the Temple of Herod, forbidding foreigners, or Gentiles to enter, on pain of death... It is possible that this second inscription may have been intended for a less conspicuous position than, say, the Clermont-Ganneau copy, and have been, accordingly, assigned to an inferior workman... The only plausible explanation would seem to be that suggested above for our Temple inscription, i.e. that it was placed inconspicuously, and therefore no one cared.
Upon it stood pillars, at equal distances from one another; declaring the law of purity, some in Greek and some in Roman letters; that no foreigner should go within that sanctuary. For that second [court of the] temple was called the sanctuary: and was ascended to by fourteen steps from the first court.
It was so satisfactory that skilful natives promptly forged several duplicates
Google books reference at [2]
{{cite journal}}
: External link in |quote=
(help)