Construction of Solomon's Temple (First Temple) in Jerusalem

Date

c. 957 BCE

Category

Religion & ideology

Region

Kingdom of Israel / Judah (Jerusalem)

Era

Ancient Civilizations

Significance

According to the Hebrew Bible, King Solomon built the First Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, traditionally completing it around 957 BCE (Josephus and the conventional regnal chronology place construction c. 966–957 BCE).

The Temple housed the Ark of the Covenant and, in biblical theology, became the single legitimate centre of sacrificial worship of YHWH, a focal point that shaped later moves toward centralised, exclusive monotheism. Described as built with Phoenician assistance, cedar from Tyre and craftsmen sent by King Hiram, it also illustrates the close Levantine economic ties of the period. No direct archaeological remains of the structure have been excavated (the site has not been dug), and a minority of scholars question the scale or date of a 10th-century building; nonetheless the Temple's destruction and rebuilding became defining events of Israelite and Jewish history and identity.

Empires active in c. 957 BCE

• Zhou Dynasty
  1046 BCE – 256 BCE
• Kingdom of Kush
  1070 BCE – 350 CE
• Phoenician City-States
  1200 BCE – 539 BCE
• Elamite Kingdom
  2700 BCE – 539 BCE

Related religion & ideology events

• Chavín de Huántar and the first pan-Andean religious cult
  c. 900 BCE
• Enuma Elish: the Babylonian epic of creation
  c. 1150 BCE
• Zoroaster and the rise of dualist religion
  c. 1200–900 BCE
• Akhenaten's Atenist revolution and the Amarna period
  c. 1348 BCE
• Composition of the Rigveda
  c. 1500-1200 BCE
• Great Ziggurat of Ur and temple-centred religion
  c. 2100 BCE

Further reading

A Little History of Religion

The wider story

A Little History of Religion

Richard Holloway

Accessible sweep of humanity's faiths and belief systems from prehistory to the present.

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