Biblical Archaeology Review

See, for example, R.A. Stewart Macalister’s interpretation of the Gezer Middle Bronze II standing stones as a high place, a Canaanite precursor of the Biblical bamah (The Excavation of Gezer, 3 vols. [London: Palestine Exploration Fund, 1912], vol. 2, pp. 381–406).

Note Torczyner’s early counteractive statement: “I have tried to show that ‘bamot’ are not ‘high’ places but sacred buildings erected, both on high as in low places” (Harry Torczyner et al., Lachish I: Tel Lachish Letters [London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1938], p. 30). He continued by suggesting that the term bamah refers to a cultic building and to all the ritual objects found within it.

Projecting balconies can be seen on Roman wall pictures from Boscoreale near Pompeii. The Latin equivalent for ejxwvstra is maenianum, meaning projecting gallery, balcony. See Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879, reprinted 1969), p. 1095.

The Story of the Tabernacle and the Temples of Jerusalem (Jerusalem: Vester, 1924).

For a photograph, see, for example, Asher S. Kaufman, “Where the Ancient Temple of Jerusalem Stood,” BAR 09:02. In that article the taper angle of the court is given as 12 degrees, whereas more careful and repeated measurements yielded 9.5 degrees.

For example, Benedictvs Niese, Flavii Iosephi Opera (Berolini: APVD Weidmannos, 1894).

Here is an example. Herbert Danby’s translation (London: Oxford University Press, 1993) of the standard text in Middot 2, 3 reads: “All the entrances and gates that were there were twenty cubits high and ten cubits wide. … ”

Asher S. Kaufman, The Temple in Jerusalem, Part 1, Tractate Middot (Jerusalem: Har Yera’eh Press, 1991) [in Hebrew with English summary and captions to figures].