Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 79:313 (Jan 1922)
Article: The Hebrew Tabernacle As A Work Of Architecture
Author: James L. Kelso

BSac 79:313 (Jan 1922) p. 62

The Hebrew Tabernacle As A Work Of Architecture

James L. Kelso

The ancient Hebrews made but one great contribution to architecture, namely, the tabernacle. The explanation of this contribution—its quantity and its quality—is to be found in the history of the Hebrews.

In the days of Joseph’s dictatorship they came to Egypt, and then continued to remain there as royal favorites during three and a half centuries of Hyksos rule, during which time they entered keenly into the appreciation of Egyptian art. But when their friends, the Hyksos, were driven out of power and the native Egyptian royal line was restored, the Hebrews at once fell into extreme disfavor and in a short time were forced into the severest serfdom. From such an existence they were rescued under the leadership of Moses, who took them out of Egypt, through the Sinai wilderness and toward Palestine. Forty years, however, were consumed in this trying journey and thus, although the Hebrews had entered the wilderness of Sinai with a broad knowledge of Egyptian art, that generation (with the exception of two men) all died in the wilderness; and it was their offspring—children of the desert—that came into the land of Canaan and into the brilliant civilization of the Canaanite.

Into this well denned and keenly developed art of Canaan, these desert-born Hebrews at once entered; but as far as literary evidence has shown, neither they nor their descendants developed any new phase of architecture. In Palestine they were copyists and not creators. One fact, however, is to be remembered in drawing such a conclusion, namely, that archeology has not yet given us more than a glimpse of the tangible remains of that age, and future evidence may display the Palestinian Hebrew as a more original builder than we now know him.

BSac 79:313 (Jan 1922) p. 63

But the Hebrew of the forty years wandering was a true contributor to architecture, and his tabernacle ranks as a masterpiece of architectural conception and construction. Now, having seen the reason of this small quantity of the Hebrew’s contribution to architecture, let us look at the exceptionally fine quality of this single contribution.

It must be remembered that the tabernacle is to be classed with temple architecture, and, as the background of all temple architecture is religion, we must first examine the religious thought of the Hebrew of the Exodus. In the episode of the ten plagues he had just witnessed the titanic struggle between monotheism and polytheism, between Jehovah and the gods of Egypt. He had watched the greatest religious ideals of Egypt being weighed in the balances and found wanting; and in the crisis of that struggle he had trusted in Jehovah’s prophet and had escaped...