Celestial Room in the Gila Valley Arizona Temple

The open house has been announced for the Gila Valley Arizona Temple, which was announced in General Conference just two years ago.  The open house will start on Friday, April 23rd, and run through Saturday, May 15th.  The dedication will take place on Sunday, May 23rd, 2010. 

Because the construction of this temple was announced just in April of 2008, with groundbreaking in February 2009, this may be the fastest construction of a temple in history.  Does anyone know of a temple that was constructed in a shorter time than this one?

"All of this came together in just a marvelous way," said Mark Bryce, temple committee coordinator for the Gila Valley Temple. "During the day or at night, it's a beautiful building, a magnificent structure, and the people who will visit the temple will feel the spirit of the house dedicated to the Savior."…

The temple is constructed on the exterior with architectural pre-cast concrete. Art-glass designs accentuate its windows. Interior materials include maple and cherry wood from the United States, along with marble and limestone. Interior murals depict local river, desert and mountain landscapes.

The Gila Valley temple will be the 132nd temple of the Church.

I’ve noticed that the design of this temple’s celestial room seems more simple to that of some other recent temples, such as the Vancouver British Columbia Temple, which will have its dedication on May 2nd; the difference between architecture firms perhaps?

Celestial Room in Vancouver British Columbia Temple

The Gila Valley Arizona Temple Completed in Record Time?

Click here to watch Val Brinkerhoff’s lecture

Finding Meaning in Sacred Architecture – Lecture by Val Brinkerhoff

Dr. Hamblin used a new technology called Gigapan to create the gigapixel panorama.  The results are nothing short of amazing.  The image loads fast, and you can zoom into any portion of the temple and see exquisite details very close-up. I have embedded the photo below for your convenience (if you are reading this in email or RSS, it will only display on the website). If you’d like to see the photo fullscreen, click here.

Dr. Hamblin has also produced a short guided tour of some of the architectural features of the eastern facade of the temple in this photo. It includes the building dedicatory inscription or plaque, sun stones, star stones, clouds, squared-circle stones (sometimes called “Saturn” stones), all seeing eye, moon stones, Alpha and Omega, the Right Hand of Fellowship, and the Angel Moroni.  To see these, click here, and then click on the “Snapshots.”

0.41 Gigapixel Photo of Salt Lake Temple

I have thought those things many times before, and I believe they have now been answered in large measure by something fascinating that Elder Bednar shared in his CES fireside address just a couple weeks ago on May 3, 2009.  His talk was entitled, “Things as They Really Are,” and he spoke about how the virtualization of reality through modern technology can take particularly pernicious forms that can have damaging eternal spiritual effects.  It is an excellent talk, and one that every member of the Church should read and study carefully.

He also spoke of the good that can come through these technologies.  One of the positive influences of our modern advances in virtual reality was shown in architecture, engineering, and design planning.  Elder Bednar showed two sets of images of how computer graphics technology is used in the design of temples, and they are incredible:

Left: Computer rendering of sealing room in the Newport Beach California Temple. Right: Photo of actual sealing room in the Newport Beach California Temple. (click for a larger view)

As you can see, an extremely detailed plan of the Newport Beach California Temple was conceived before construction even started, even down to the fabrics, textures, colors, lights, windows, and furniture.  Here is another:

Left: Computer rendering of lobby in the Copenhagen Denmark Temple. Right: Photo of actual lobby in the Copenhagen Denmark Temple. (click for a larger view)

Again, the attention to detail is astounding in the lobby rendering of the Copenhagen Denmark Temple before it was constructed.  Needless to say, the Church knows a great deal about what a temple will look like before the dirt is stirred.  Coming from a computer graphics background, I am greatly impressed.

The Church spares no expense in doing things right, particularly where the Lord’s temples are concerned.  As in ancient times, the House of the Lord is only built with the finest of materials, craft, and skill available, and the most painstaking efforts are made beforehand to ensure that the Lord’s most holy house ends up being what it should be--the most sacred place on earth.

The Virtual Design of Temples

Symbols on the Salt Lake Temple

There is an article this morning in the Mormon Times about the symbolism in the architecture of the Salt Lake Temple.  It is written by Lynn Arave who used as a reference Dean R. Zimmerman’s article in the New Era entitled “The Salt Lake Temple” from June 1978.

The article cites a brief description and explanation of several of the symbols found on the temple, and includes some interesting details that I did not know before, including this:

Not all the symbolism originally planned for the Salt Lake Temple became a reality, either. For example, an early sketch of the temple by Angell found hanging today in Brigham Young’s guest room at Cove Fort shows that two Angel Moroni statues, one each on the east and west ends, were initially envisioned. Only an eastern statue was ever used for reasons unclear….

For perhaps its first few decades, the Salt Lake Temple used to have statues of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, one each in niches at the top of the two eastern stairways. These bronze statues were later removed and placed elsewhere on the temple block, according to Elder Talmage in “The House of the Lord.” The empty spaces for these two statues remain and are popular photography spots for wedding parties today.

For a more extensive treatment of the symbols of the Salt Lake Temple see Matthew Brown and Paul Smith’s excellent book Symbols in Stone.

Salt Lake Temple Symbols

Hypaethral Temple of Apollo at Didyma, Turkey. (http://www.utexas.edu/courses/citylife/architecture1.html)

I came across a new word today in my inbox – hypaethral (\hye-PEETH-rul\).  Webster defines this adjective as:

1  : having a roofless central space
2  : open to the sky

What caught my interest was that this word is applied mostly to ancient temples.  The example sentence that was given was:

During our tour of Egypt, we visited the hypaethral temple of Philae, which was dismantled and relocated after the construction of a dam caused its original site to be submersed. 

Webster’s given etymology of the word explains why it is often associated with temples:

Ancient Roman architect and engineer Vitruvius used the Latin word “hypaethrus” to describe temples in which the "cella" (the part of the temple housing an image of the deity) was wholly or partially uncovered. "Hypaethrus" is a word sculpted from the Greek prefix “hypo-,” meaning “under or beneath,” and the Greek word “aithÄ"r,” meaning “air or heaven.” In the late-18th century, English classicists adopted the remodeled form “hypaethral” in their writings of ancient architecture. Another adjective that they occasionally employed is “cleithral,” which designates temples having roofed central spaces. ("Cleithral" comes from “kleithra,” the Greek word for “lattice.”)

In other words, the innermost sanctuary of ancient temples (known in the Israelite tradition as the Holy of Holies) was sometimes open to the sky, hyp-aethral, or “under heaven.”  This was likely due to the temples’ often association with the cosmos.  While although the “Hypaethral Temple” at Philae may not have actually been open to the sky in its heyday, a couple examples of this scenario might be found in Stonehenge and Göbekli Tepe.

Read more in the Wikipedia article on hypaethral.  Dr. William R. Long also has a good description and study of this word, including this interesting quote from Henry David Thoreau, who used the term figuratively:

Shall the mind be a public arena, where the affairs of the street and the gossip of the tea-table chiefly are discussed? Or shall it be a quarter of heaven itself – an hypaethral temple, consecrated to the service of the gods?

Hypaethral – A Roofless Temple

I am grateful for the SANE organizers for allowing us to videotape the symposium and make it available online, particularly Dan McLellan for his support.  I’d also like to thank Steve Smoot and Tyler Livingston for their help with the video cameras, digitizing and uploading.

Below are all the videos that we were able to record at the symposium (that have been uploaded to date).  You can see short bios of each presenter here or here.  David Larsen also took some great notes in the Ancient Israel sessions.  Note:  I will update this post with links to more of the videos as soon as they become available.  Enjoy!

Ancient Israel #1

Donald W. Parry: “Eve, Eden, and the Temple” – not permitted to record
Dan Belnap: “The Role of Scent in the Rituals of Ancient Israel” – Entire lecture or Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
David Larsen: “Two High Priesthoods? Evidence for Changes in the Priesthood from First to Second Temple Judaism” – Entire lecture or Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
William Hamblin: “What is the ‘Chariot’ in Ezekiel 1?” – Entire lecture or Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 or KeyNote presentation (see also his presentation the same day on the iconography of the “Hand of God” – part 1, part 2)

Ancient Israel #2

James Carroll: “An Expanded View of the Israelite Scapegoat” – Entire lecture or Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
David Seely: “The Tabernacle as Cosmos in Josephus’s Antiquities” – Entire lecture or Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
Brian M. Hauglid: “Ancient Temple Architecture: Beliefs and Practices in Light of the Restored Temple Idea” – not permitted to record
Matthew Brown: “Kingship Initiation Motifs in Ancient Israel” – not permitted to record

Early Christianity

Andrew Miller: “The Ante-Nicene Mysteries and their New Testament Sources” – Entire lecture or Part 1, Part 2
Aaron Snyder: “The Prayer Circle in Early Christianity” – Entire lecture or Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
Daniel Becerra: “The Chrism in Early Christianity” – Entire lecture or Part 1, Part 2
Rachel A. Grover: “The Paradise Garden and Messianic Age Imagery in the 5th to 7th Century Church Floor Mosaics of Jordan” – Entire lecture or Part 1, Part 2

The Classical World

Chris Dawe: “The Deification of Romulus” – did not present
Bryan Benson: “The Treatment of Temples in Plato’s Republic and Laws” – Entire lecture or Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
Dustin Simmons: “Emperor as God: Roman Imperial Cult Worship & Implications for Early Christians” – did not present
Daniel O. McClellan: “Initiation Ideology in Apuleius’ Golden Ass” – Entire lecture or Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
Keith Fairbank: “The Eleusinian Mysteries: Greatest Conquest of Demetrios Poliorketes” – Entire lecture or Part 1, Part 2

Egypt

Doug Marsh: “The Microcosmic Egyptian Temple” – Entire lecture or Part 1, Part 2
Kerry Muhlestein and Alyssa Lewis: “The Role of Violent Rituals in the Egyptian Temple” – Entire lecture or Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
Elliott Wise: “An Odor of Sanctity: The Iconography, Magic, and Liturgy of Egyptian Incense” – Entire Lecture or Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
John Gee: “Rituals of the Egyptian Temple: An Orientation” – not permitted to record

Open Session

Jacob Moody: “Philistine Ritual Artifacts” – did not present
Mark Wright: “The Cultural Context of Nephite Apostasy” – not permitted to record
Scott Preston Sukhan Nibley: “Ancient Southeast Asian Temples” – Entire lecture or Part 1, Part 2
Joseph Petramalo: “The Samaritan Temple and Priesthood” – Entire lecture or Part 1, Part 2

Videos of SANE Symposium Lectures on “Temples and Ritual in Antiquity”

Satellite photo of the San Diego California Temple with the "Seal of Melchizedek" overlayed 13 times. I particularly like the symbol used in the skylight of the atrium in the center of the temple.

(Continued from Part 3)

To continue my research I wanted to know as accurately as possible the story about this symbol, the “seal of Melchizedek,” as it was used in the San Diego Temple.  I couldn’t find a good account online, so I decided to go to the source.  Who better would know than the design architect of the temple?  So I gave him a call. 

His name is William “Bill” S. Lewis Jr., and he is a member of the Church and a current sealer at the San Diego Temple.  He graduated from the University of Southern California in 1953 with a degree in architecture, was a co-owner of an architectural firm in San Diego for a number of years, and he has been involved with many architectural projects in the San Diego area.  I’m sure he counts his design work on the temple as one of his most cherished experiences.  He retired in 1990, after a 41-year career.  See the footnotes for a little more background about Br. Lewis .  He was very cordial on the phone, and gave me the courtesy of about a twenty minute phone call.  The story he told me was intriguing, and I thought it would be good to document it.

He said that the architects were given quite a lot of freedom on the design of this particular temple, and it was not dictated by the Church’s building department as other temples have been.  This freedom was granted expressly by President Hinckley.

He said they were working hard to find a common symbol, module, or pattern to give continuity to the design, or to give a certain character to the temple.  They started with a square, but they thought that was too plain and boxy.  Then they started chamfering the square’s corners which brought it to an 8-sided figure.  When they extended the lines it became two overlapping squares.  They thought that would work well and so they started using it more and more in the design of the temple.  He said that the more they used it the better and better it worked.  Some people asked about the symbolism of the design, and he told them he didn’t know if it had any particular symbolism.  He said that they put a circle in the middle, which he thought could have stood for the sun or the Celestial Kingdom.  He said that they used it many thousands of times all throughout the design of the temple – in the doors, fencing, exterior, interior, trimwork, floorplan, etc (see satellite photo above for the use of the symbol in the overall layout).  When the design was originally shown to the General Authorities in Salt Lake they had sun stones, moon stones, and star stones on the exterior of the temple too (mirroring the Salt Lake and Nauvoo Temples), but the Brethren notified them that these symbols shouldn’t be used.  So they removed these symbols, but they didn’t say anything about the interlocking squares symbol.

Once the temple was finished, Elder David B. Haight of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles escorted the media through the temple, as they are some of the first that get to go through.  Someone from the media asked him what the symbol was, and what it represented, and Elder Haight was taken a little off-guard by that question.  He said that it was probably just an architectural detail.

Br. Lewis said that a good friend of his, Stan Smith, who has been a regional representative, and was the project representative on the temple, was taking photos all the time during the construction of the temple.  But this particular symbol bugged him for some reason.  He took the photos he had down to the Church Historian’s Office in Salt Lake City and asked if they knew anything about it.  They didn’t.  But they suggested that he take them down to Hugh Nibley at BYU who might know something about it.  So Br. Smith made an appointment with Br. Nibley, and sat down with him in his office and asked him if this symbol had a name.  Nibley said something like, “Oh sure, it is the seal of King Melchizedek.” He also indicated that it was a symbol of Melchizedek’s power, kingdom, and as a type of name of Melchizedek, like a seal in wax.

Stan Smith called Br. Lewis to tell him the good news, and was quite excited about it.  Br. Lewis wanted to verify it himself, so he made an appointment with Nibley too.  Nibley verified it with Lewis as well, after which they had an extensive conversation about all things temples, Greek, Roman, Egyptian, etc., with Nibley in typical fashion referring to all three in the same sentence.

Br. Lewis said that President Hinckley would probably be interested to know this detail about the symbol, since he had met with the architects 4 times throughout the design of this temple, which was extremely unusual.  So Lewis wrote a letter to President Hinckley, who Lewis said also verified it with Nibley.

Since then Br. Lewis has seen the same symbol used on the Newport Beach Temple, and also in several places in the Salt Lake Temple (like the door patrons enter with a beehive in the center), and he supposes that we will see it more and more as time goes on.  But he was pleasantly surprised to have found out such an interesting detail about the symbol that he used throughout the San Diego Temple.  He has been asked to speak hundreds of times about the design of the San Diego Temple in firesides and other occasions.  He said a couple years ago he was asked to speak at an event of the Fine Arts Department at BYU about it, but wasn’t sure of the details of the occasion.

It is doubtful that there is a transcription anywhere of this story, so I took as many details down as I could on our phone conversation.  Thanks to Br. Lewis for telling us this great story.

(To be continued…)

The Seal of Melchizedek – Part 4

A group of researchers has just begun a two-week excavation at the well-known Stonehenge site in England in an attempt to discover, once and for all, the meaning behind the mysterious ruins. According to current scientific dating, Stonehenge dates back to about 3000 B.C., but it has perplexed archaeologists for years as to the purpose of its creation. Who created it and why? Why was the structure a venerated destination for thousands of years, being built, taken down, rebuilt and expanded a number of times.

What was Stonehenge?

There are, of course, many theories that have circulated since studies began hundreds of years ago. According to the BBC, the most popular hypotheses have regarded Stonehenge as a:

1. Gigantic calendar – The arrangement of the stones is such to allow for astronomical observations, including the summer and winter solstices.
2. Religious worship site – Some have said that the heavenward pointing stones connected man with the spiritual, as well as their circular placement. It created a type of shrine or sanctuary.
3. Monument for the dead – This theory states that the stones represented a permanence of ancestry that could be memorialized.
4. Extraterrestrial landing site – Some in the 1970s believed that beings from other worlds would come to this site.
5. Healing center – The latest theory, and the one supported by the latest researchers that are currently excavating at the site, is that Stonehenge served as a healing center for the sick and otherwise afflicted who would travel for miles around to be supernaturally cured from their ills. It was a kind of “prehistoric Lourdes.”

Scientists studying the ruins seem to argue for one or the other theories, and reject the others. I confess I’m not an archaeologist in the least kind, but I believe that Stonehenge could have served all of the above purposes that different researchers have concluded that the site was built for.

Nibley Spoke of Stonehenge

Hugh Nibley associated Stonehenge, as well as the rest of the megalithic stone circles found in many parts of Europe and other parts of the world, to the temple. In one of his latest analyzes Nibley spoke of the ruins in Avebury, another henge which is much larger and older than Stonehenge and just 20 miles to the north of the more famous site:

Since death cannot be denied, what hope is there for the hereafter? The Egyptian answer, as everybody recognizes today, was to start all over again and have a new life. That meant a new creation. How was that to be effected? There is one glowing example which no one can overlook--the sun. And the Egyptians, like other ancient people, made the most of it. Stick close to the sun was the idea, and do what he does. Get yourself a place in his boat, as a crewmember, attendant (shms-Re), or member of the family. To prolong your own life, you must get in on the action--you must be present at the only time and place that the sun, completing one cycle and reaching its lowest point at the solstice, without a split-second hesitation, reverses its direction and begins its upward climb [solstices].

This means that everybody in the world had to come together at a special place--the exact center of the cosmos, since it was the point of convergence for the pilgrims’ roads from every point on the horizon. And for the beginning of a new life cycle, you must start with the creation all over again. The creation drama is a standard feature of temple worship. Everywhere, as far as we can trace the records and the ruins, there have been great gatherings of the race--the panegyris, or “everybody in a circle,” in every part of the world. Many have recognized the phenomenon, but no one can explain when or how it began. Eduard Meyer thinks it started with animals in their periodic meetings to disport and reproduce. Megalithic circles marking the great ceremonial assemblages are found by the thousands and go back to the Stone Age.
I had the good fortune to be stationed near Avebury in Hertfordshire at the end of World War II and had ample time to examine the vast establishment. That was before it was discovered by the tourists. The stone circle, [was] 1400 feet in diameter… From the air (I had to pass over it slowly in regular and frequent glider flights) one could behold traces of prehistoric roads, marked by standing stones, leading from all directions. That is the general layout of countless megalithic ceremonial centers, over ten thousand of which are known…

On another occasion, Nibley said:

The temple is the great teaching institution of the human race; universities are much older than we might ever expect. A university began as a Greek Mouseion, a temple of the Muses, who represented all departments of knowledge… The Egyptians called it the “House of Life.” It was an observatory, a great megalithic complex of standing stones (later columns and pylons), with amazingly sophisticated devices for observing and recording the motions of the heavens. A study of Stonehenge shows that it was a computer of great accuracy, a university set in the midst of sacred groves -- botanical and geological gardens and groves; it was a “paradise,” a Garden of Eden, where all life is sacrosanct.

And again:

To get the general picture we have to see this institution which is so very important. We’ll call it the panegyris here. Pan means “everybody,” and gyris means “a gyroscope,” around in a circle. This is when everybody meets in the big circle, the cosmic circle. “In ancient times at holy shrines, each believed to mark the exact center of the universe… represented as the point at which the four quarters of the earth converge… one might have seen assembled at the new year… the moment of creation, the beginning and ending of time, vast concourses of people would come together.” That’s what you have at Stonehenge and Avebury and well over a thousand ancient megalithic centers scattered all over Europe. They are also in Asia. There are lots of them in Palestine. “Vast concourses of people, each thought to represent the entire human race in the presence of all its ancestors and gods….”

Nibley continually repeated these same things:

I spent eight months in 1943 and 1944 preparing for the invasion of Europe, at Grenham Lodge, not far from Avebury, near Marlborough, on the plains of England. This is one of the oldest (2600 B.C.) and largest monuments of Europe, 500 years older than Stonehenge. It’s enormous. Much excavating has been done there. On days off, I had a chance to inspect it, and I was electrified by it…

At this same time “in other parts of the British Isles people were already putting up great stone circles for ceremonies. At Stennes in the Orkneys [in Scotland halfway to the North Pole] twelve steepling columns stood in a ring” -- as Jacob did in Israel, whenever he made a covenant (Genesis 31:45-46).

Twelve steepling columns stood in a ring. . . . In Ireland the chambered round cairn of New Grange with its quartz walls with a passage aligned towards the mid-winter sunrise was placed inside a circle of over thirty massive blocks of stone. In the Lake District, source of many stone axes, people were going to splendid stone circles with names that peal like a prehistoric role of honour: Long Meg and Her Daughters, the Carles at Castlerigg, Sunken Kirk, the Grey Horses. Rites inside these sacred rings differed but in every region where there was a fair-sized population circular enclosures were the foci [notice the focus, the center points] of ceremonies, megalithic rings in the north and west, henges of earth or chalk in the stoneless areas of lowland Britain.

That is how they differed in form, but they always have the ring, and they always do the same thing when they come together. It is vastly older than the pyramids, is beautifully done, and contains magnificent things…

The point is that our ancestors were doing all this far back in time… In the earliest times, everybody seemed to be doing the same sort of thing, building the same kinds of structures….

“Avebury became almost a metropolitan centre to which people came from miles around to trade and to settle disputes, to worship in the marvelous stone rings that expressed the barbaric pride of the natives.” And the remains are not a few. There are piles of stuff to show what was going on at these places. They were all doing the same sort of thing.

Death and regeneration are the themes of Avebury. The presence of human bones, the pieces of stone, the red ochre, the pockets of fertile earth, the antlers, the shapes of the sarsens, the architecture of the avenues and circles, all are consistent with the belief that Avebury was intended as a temple in which, at various times of the year, the large population could gather to watch and take part in ceremonies of magic and evocation that would safeguard their lives…

Gordon Childe [the great Scottish prehistorian] thought of Avebury as a cathedral, Stuart Piggot as an open sanctuary associated with a sky-god… Jacquetta Hawkes wrote of fertility rites involving the earth and the sun although “what those mysteries were we shall never know.” However generalised these observations there is agreement about a religious centre… linked with the earth, the sun [the heavenly bodies in their motions], ritual objects and dead bones [i.e., with the ancestors, and scholars all agree on that]. Not many years ago Patrick Crampton went further, suggesting that Avebury was not only a temple of the powerful Earth Goddess but also a “city,” the first “capital -- religious, cultural, commercial -- of most of southern Britain.”

So these concepts are very old. I myself was enormously impressed by the size of the stones, weighing sixty tons, set in a great circle 350 yards across. It was an amazing accomplishment that they dragged them to the site. It required great work, concentration, and leadership…

The enormous ditch around the stones is thirty feet deep, dug out by use of only deer horns. For ritual reasons, they could not use anything else.

I used to fly over the area frequently. You could see radiating from the site great table stones, and the great prehistoric roads that led to the site, from hundreds of miles to the north. From everywhere, people came to Avebury, nearly five thousand years ago, to celebrate the very thing we do in our temples today -- the continuity of life.

And again:

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was the habit of English country gentlemen, fired with the scientific interests of the former century and the romantic sensibilities of the latter, to survey, sketch, describe, and speculate about the many and mysterious prehistoric stone circles, avenues, passage-graves, and mounds on their estates and elsewhere. In their papers read before local learned societies and in their letters to antiquarian journals, they debated endlessly without reaching any consensus of agreement as to whether those often imposing monuments were the work of some mysterious unknown race or that of the ancient Britons, Druids, Romans, Saxons, or Danes. But on one thing there was almost unanimous agreement, namely, that the most impressive of the structures were temples. In the light of local folktales and legends, immemorial rustic seasonal festivities, and other quaint customs and observances, supported by occasional illuminating passages from classical and medieval writers as well as the Bible, they could imagine vast concourses of people gathering at these great ceremonial centers at times set by sun, moon, stars, and the growing and harvesting seasons, to celebrate a new lease on life for the individual and the society…

[An article from July 1980 Scientific American] finds “a succession of what we can only call cathedral architects” at work in the third and fourth millenniums B.C. “Most emphatically,” he writes, these “megalithic rings in general [were] sacred and secular meeting places,” and he sees” an impelling faith” behind the immense effort and skill that produced them--”some powerful religious belief including belief in an afterlife.” He notes that though the building activity stopped by 1000 B.C., “the general population” retained folk-memories of what went on, and he finds it “more than possible that the Druidic priesthood . . . used them as temples.” Finally he notes that even Christian churches in some places did not disdain to build upon their ruins.

So what were these people doing? They were building temples, sacred places where they could go to commune with diety and perform their sacred ceremonies, rites, and ordinances.

Latter-day Parallels

If you’ve made it this far in the post, congratulations. Probably 95% will have dropped off by now. Who cares about that old wreck Stonehenge, right? It has nothing to do with me. Well, it has much more to do with us than we might casually admit or recognize. Nibley saw it, he recognized it, and largely thanks to him our knowledge of the temple is placed squarely in the milieu of religious worship since the beginning of time.

The similarities between the restored ordinances of the LDS temple and the various theories that exist about Stonehenge go much deeper than first appearances:

1. Gigantic calendar – The temple has always been a place where, as Nibley said, “one gets one’s bearings on the universe”. The temple is a model of the universe. Even the newest member of the Church recognizes the vast number of cosmological symbols which adorn our temples, on the outside and within. The temple connects us with the heavens, the planets, the stars, the orbits, the motions, the dwelling place of God. The temple is the gate of heaven (Gen. 28:17). It connects us back to God.
2. Religious worship site – As Nibley extensively noted, Stonehenge was a religious site, as were all the other stone circle creations of man in ancient times. They were places where man got in touch with the Gods. God spoke to man there, and man to God. It represented the center of the cosmos, where God dwells. It was where people traveled far or near to worship deity. This is precisely the same of our modern-day temples.
3. Monument for the dead – I don’t think there is a greater monument or establishment to the dead in all the world than the Latter-day Saint temples which dot the earth today. 99.9% of the work that we do there is for the salvation and redemption of the dead, so that they might receive the ordinances of the gospel of Jesus Christ that they had no opportunity to in mortality. The gates of hell have not prevailed. They have been thrown open wide by Jesus Christ, and many thousands upon thousands are being redeemed every day in holy temples scattered across the world, dedicated to the work of the Lord. Billions of names have been gathered in preparation for the work. Around the year 350 A.D. Cyril of Jerusalem gave the following as part of the instruction in the early Christian prayer circle practice, hinting at a kind of vicarious offering of the atonement for the dead:
   

   After that we remember the dead--patriarchs, prophets, apostles, martyrs--that God might grant our petition through the joining of our prayers with theirs. Then we pray for … all of our own people who have fallen asleep, believing that the greatest possible benefit can come to the spirits on whose behalf (hyper hon) the petition is made.

   I have often heard people ask: What good does it do the departed spirit, whether the person was good or bad in life, to be remembered in the prayer? … Ans. By doing for them and for ourselves what a loving God requires (exileoumenoi), we make available (prospheromen) the atoning sacrifice which Christ made for our sins.

4. Extraterrestrial landing site – This might seem out of the realm of relationship with the temple, but it is not. Extraterrestrials are none other than beings or personages from another place. We do not believe in the aliens of popular folklore, the little green men with oversized heads and eyeballs. Modern revelation to prophets and apostles has revealed that there is other life in the universe besides us, and it is the very same life as we are – people. God’s creations are as innumerable as the sands of the sea, and each of them have human beings living on them, sons and daughters of God, just like us (Moses 1:35). Latter-day Saints believe that God and angels have visited the earth anew since the beginning of the restoration (JS-H 1). Indeed, from the very beginning of time, this earth was populated from people from another place (i.e. heaven). We believe that the temple is a place where God and his angels can come to this earth and commune with the saints. They walk the halls. They witness the ordinances. They interact with the patrons. They facilitate the work, both inside and outside the temple. They have been seen countless times in temples since Kirtland. God and his angels are not absent from the his work on the earth.
5. Healing center – The latest theories, especially those of the current excavators, surrounding Stonehenge are that it was a place of healing, where people could gather who had ailments, and the sanctity and supernatural powers of the spot would help cure them. LDS temples today have prayer rolls in the temples whereupon the names of people who are sick and afflicted (either physically, emotionally, mentally or spiritually) may be written, and for whom prayers are then offered up in the temple. We believe the words of James who said, “Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much” (James 5:16). As part of the same instruction from Cyril in the fourth century on the early Christian prayer circle we read:
   

   We pray for the common peace of the church and the well-being of the world (kosmos), for kings, commanders, and allies, for the sick and afflicted, and in short for all who need help.

Stonehenge is not something that is so unrelated to our present situation that we cannot understand it. It has served the same purpose that many sacred spaces have since the beginning, and which has been restored in its true and correct form today in the Latter-day Saint temples, the house of the Lord.

Stonehenge: An Ancient Temple

The exhibition attempts to synthesize the literary sources with finds that have been excavated in this country, particularly over the past fifty years: architectural remains, liturgical objects from churches, personal belongings of the Christian inhabitants of this land, and souvenirs made for pilgrims.

They have made an effort to separate the artifacts from the religious doctrines, trying to present the artifacts as they are, objectively.

I found several things interesting as I browsed the website of the exhibition:

1. “His disciples – the Apostles – were twelve in number – a symbolic figure, evoking the Twelve Tribes of Israel.”
2. “This inscribed stone fragment belonged to one of a series of stone slabs that stood in the court of the Temple in Jerusalem and served as a divider between the area permitted to both Jews and Gentiles and the area permitted only to Jews. . . . The existence of such a divider in the Temple court is attested by Josephus: “in this (balustrade) at regular intervals stood slabs giving warning, some in Greek, others in Latin characters, of the law of purification, to wit that no foreigner was permitted to enter the holy place…” (Jewish War, V, 193-198). The actual inscription read thus: “No foreigner shall enter within the balustrade of the Temple, or within the precint, and whosoever shall be caught shall be responsible for (his) death that will follow in consequence (of his trespassing).”
   

   Prohibition of Entry to the Temple

3. Regarding early church buildings, “The structure of the church edifice made it possible to maintain a separation between the members of the congregation and the catechumens, who had not yet been baptized and were therefore only permitted to take part in some of the rites.”
4. “The functionaries of the church included the bishop, the priest, and the deacon, as well as various assistants. One could become a priest from the age of thirty and a deacon from the age of twenty-five. Women could also serve the church, as deaconesses. The large churches were headed by a bishop (episkopos), accompanied by a council of elders (presbyters). The deacons assisted the bishop with the collection of donations and the distribution of charity, and helped him perform the various rites. In the East, married men were not prevented from joining the clergy.”
5. “The apse and the raised platform in front of it – the bema – were surrounded by a low stone partition – the chancel screen – which separated the congregation from the sacred area, where the liturgical rites were performed. The officiating clergy sat on benches built along the walls of the apse, with the bishop in the center. Toward the front of the bema stood the altar, beneath which, in a depression in the floor, a reliquary was hidden. Additional tables, on which the Scriptures and various liturgical objects were placed, also stood on the bema.”
   

   An Early Christian Church

6. “The rite of baptism – symbolizing the purification of sins and rebirth – marks an individual’s acceptance into the Church. In the Byzantine period, this rite was only performed after the candidate for conversion (catechumen) had completed a rigorous course of study. During this lengthy ceremony, the catechumen was immersed in water, anointed with oil, and dressed in a pure white garment. Only then was he or she permitted to enter the church and participate in the Eucharist by partaking of the holy bread and wine.”
   

   Baptismal Font

7. “The most important part of the Christian liturgy was the Eucharist, in which the participants partook of the holy bread and wine – symbols of the body and blood of Jesus serving as a reminder of his sacrifice. The liturgical vessels that were set upon the altar during the ceremony included ewers of wine and water, a strainer, chalices, and patens (plates) for the holy bread.”
8. “The painting depicts three figures wearing halos – apparently representing saints -their arms outstretched in an attitude of prayer. Their manner of dress is characteristic of that of Christian clergymen in the Byzantine period.”
9. “In the rooms adjoining the church, the liturgical items were stored: the vessels used in the Eucharist, the holy books, processional objects, and the liturgical vestments. In addition to these precious objects, funds and gifts acquired by the church through donations, through the leasing of property that had been bequeathed to the church, and through the fulfillment of vows was also stored in the treasury, just as they had been stored in the temples in previous periods. It was forbidden to sell this property, unless this were necessary in order to pay for the release of prisoners or the redemption of captives. The donations of the faithful – both congregants and pilgrims – were the main source of the church’s wealth and were used for its maintenance and renovation.”

There are many more fascinating early Christian artifacts on the website of this exhibition. We thank thee, O God, for a prophet, who has restored these things in the latter-days.

An Early Christian Church Exhibit