The Old Testament offers two meticulous descriptions of the Temple of Jerusalem: one in 1 Kings and the other in Ezekiel. The description in 1 Kings is more precise, today we might say “user-friendly”:
And the house which king Solomon built for the LORD, the length thereof was threescore cubits, and the breadth thereof twenty cubits, and the height thereof thirty cubits. And the porch before the temple of the house, twenty cubits was the length thereof, according to the breadth of the house; and ten cubits was the breadth thereof before the house. And for the house he made windows of narrow lights. And against the wall of the house he built chambers round about, against the walls of the house round about, both of the temple and of the oracle: and he made chambers round about: The nethermost chamber was five cubits broad, and the middle was six cubits broad, and the third was seven cubits broad: for without in the wall of the house he made narrowed rests round about, that the beams should not be fastened in the walls of the house. And the house, when it was in building, was built of stone made ready before it was brought thither: so that there was neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron heard in the house, while it was in building. The door for the middle chamber was in the right side of the house: and they went up with winding stairs into the middle chamber, and out of the middle into the third. So he built the house, and finished it; and covered the house with beams and boards of cedar. And then he built chambers against all the house, five cubits high: and they rested on the house with timber of cedar. (1 Kings 6:2–10)
Not so exact is the lengthy description in Ezekiel (40:5–49, 41:1–26, and 42:1–20), which, precisely because of its apparent incoherence, seems apt to challenge its exegetes to the most reckless feats of interpretation:
And behold a wall on the outside of the house round about, and in the man’s hand a measuring reed of six cubits long by the cubit and an hand breadth: so he measured the breadth of the building, one reed; and the height, one reed. Then came he unto the gate which looketh toward the east, and went up the stairs thereof, and measured the threshold of the gate, which was one reed broad; and the other threshold of the gate, which was one reed broad. And every little chamber was one reed long, and one reed broad; and between the little chambers were five cubits; and the threshold of the gate by the porch of the gate within was one reed. He measured also the porch of the gate within, one reed. Then measured he the porch of the gate, eight cubits; and the posts thereof, two cubits; and the porch of the gate was inward. And the little chambers of the gate eastward were three on this side, and three on that side; they three were of one measure: and the posts had one measure on this side and on that side. And he measured the breadth of the entry of the gate, ten cubits; and the length of the gate, thirteen cubits. The space also before the little chambers was one cubit on this side, and the space was one cubit on that side: and the little chambers were six cubits on this side, and six cubits on that side. He measured then the gate from the roof of one little chamber to the roof of another: the breadth was five and twenty cubits, door against door. He made also posts of threescore cubits, even unto the post of the court round about the gate. And from the face of the gate of the entrance unto the face of the porch of the inner gate were fifty cubits. And there were narrow windows to the little chambers, and to their posts within the gate round about, and likewise to the arches: and windows were round about inward: and upon each post were palm trees. (Ezek. 40:5–16)
And so on in the same vein. Imagine trying to reconstruct a model of the Temple based on this description with the aid of a measuring tape and a conversion table. In addition to which, medieval interpreters did not even have a conversion table for the measurements, to say nothing of the corruption of the data that would have occurred thanks to the manifold translations, and manuscript transcriptions of translations, that they had at their disposal. But, come to that, even a twenty-first-century architect would find it a challenge to translate these verbal instructions into a project drawing.
It is interesting to observe the pains the medieval allegorists go to in their determination to see the Temple as Ezekiel describes it (and in their efforts to picture it they attempt to provide instructions for its ideal reconstruction; see De Lubac 1959–1964, II, 7, 2). The Hebrew tradition itself admitted the impossibility of a coherent architectural reading: in the twelfth century Rabbi Solomon Ben Isaac agreed that no one could ever figure out the arrangement of the northern chambers, where they began to the east and how far they extended to the west, and where they began on the one side and how far they extended on the other (see Rosenau 1979). Furthermore, Ezekiel himself does not claim to have seen a real construction but a “quasi aedificium” (“as [it were] the frame of a city,” Ezek. 40:2, my emphasis), while the Fathers of the Church, just as they granted that the vision of the four living creatures defied literal explanation, also declared that the measurements of the building were inconceivable in physical terms, given, for example, that the gates would have to have been wider than the walls.
Thus, interpreters like Hugh of Fouilloy, in his De claustro animae (XII century), though he based himself on 1 Kings 6 (less confused and confusing than Ezekiel’s vision), confined himself to analyzing the mystical significance of the Temple. The Temple in fact stands for the body of Christ and that of every Christian (“nostrum spirituale templum” [“our spiritual temple”]), the cedars of Lebanon stand for the most glorious men of all times, and Hiram’s builders who hewed the stones are the good monks who know how to smooth the irregularities and imperfections of the rough stone (in other words, the souls of their brethren), making them even and harmoniously disposed. And the splendor of the precious metals and stones was the splendor of charity. Cutting the stones signified cutting away human vices. Solomon employed 30,000 workmen, and this number is a multiple of 3 and 10 and, setting aside the mystical meanings of the number 10, 3 is the number of the Trinity, of the three eminent good works (prayer, fasting, and alms deeds), the three virtues of reading, meditation, and preaching, and so on.
Confronted with the measurements of the Temple, rather than trying to interpret them literally, Hugh comments upon the spiritual significance of its dimensions (the length of the building means patience, its breadth means charity, its height means hope, etc.) (chapter XVII, PL 176, 1118).
Other commentators struggled instead to reconstruct the Temple because, if we buy into the idea (Augustinian in origin) that, when faced in Scripture with expressions that seem to convey an excess of basically superfluous information, such as numbers and measurements, we should be on the lookout for an allegorical meaning, bearing in mind that biblical allegory was in factis not in verbis. Therefore, that a reed was six cubits long was not a mere verbal affirmation or flatus vocis, but a fact that had actually occurred, and that God had so predisposed so that we could interpret it allegorically. Hence, a realistic reconstruction of the Temple had to be possible, otherwise it would mean Scripture had lied.
And so, in his In visionem Ezechielis, we find Richard of Saint Victor—in a polemical stance vis-à-vis the Fathers of the Church, who had advised interpreters to stick to a spiritual reading—laboring over his calculations and producing plans, elevations and cross sections, deciding, when two measurements are impossible to reconcile, that one of them must refer to the whole edifice and the other to one of its parts—in a desperate attempt (doomed, alas, to failure) to reduce the quasi aedificium to something a medieval master builder could really have constructed (see De Lubac 1959–1964: II, 5, 3).