A Greek or Roman temple with the pronaos shaded.
There is a great new LDS-oriented temple-themed blog in the Bloggernacle entitled Pronaos, which is run by Grampa Enoch. From the first few posts this appears like it will be a very good blog indeed.
The word pronaos comes from the Greek for “before a temple” (pro-before, naos-temple). It references the inner area of the portico (porch) of ancient temples, or between the outer wall or colonnade and the entrance to the inner shrine. In modern-day LDS temples, the entryway/front desk/lobby area I suppose could be viewed as the architectural pronaos today. It is the first zone of the archetypal tripartite or three-level temple, corresponding to the courtyard of Moses’ Tabernacle.
His latest post is on the location of Solomon’s temple, which we took a look at a few days ago. According to Grampa Enoch, the only real answer to the question “Where was the location of Solomon’s temple?” is “We don’t know.” Unless we have future archaeological investigations, we won’t know for sure.
He also confirms my hestitancy about the Meridian Magazine article theory:
But even if we could completely excavate the Temple Mount/Haram, it is quite possible that all remains of Solomon’s original temple were removed in subsequent rebuilding programs…
…it is important to note that almost nothing visible on the plaza inside the Haram [Temple Mount] today dates from Solomon’s time. Most of what we see today was built by the Muslims after 638. There are also a number of crusader structures as well. Any interpretation of the Temple Mount must first deal with the dating and interpretation of the visible structures.
Since virtually all the evidence presented by Meridian Magazine’s theory is based on structures currently visible on the temple mount, the entire premise of the theory is unfortunately faulty. Grampa Enoch gives an extensive list of sources that one may look to gain a better understanding of the pre-Islamic Temple Mount.
Take a look at Pronaos!
Tradition has held that