Hamblin and Seely also describe in some detail the impact of Solomon’s temple on Christian architecture. Eusbius describes the consecration of a church in Tyre that picks up on multiple temple-related themes: “The bishop-builder is compared with Bezalel, Solomon, and Zerubbabel, builders of the Israelite Tabernacle and Temple . . . . Like Solomon’s temple, the new church-temple is built following the ‘patterns and archetypes’ of the Celestial Temple, using the ‘heavenly types in symbolic fashion’ . . . In the end, the glory of the new Christian Temple exceeds that of Solomon’s, fulfilling a prophecy of Haggai.”

The temple symbolism surrounding the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is even more extensive:

“It was said to have been dedicated on precisely the same day that Solomon dedicated the Temple, and its liturgical calendar was strongly influenced by Jewish Temple festival days. Perpetual lamps burned in the Holy Sepulcher as in the Temple; incense was burned to the Lord. The Sepulcher was the ‘center of the world,’ precisely the way in which the Jews described the Temple. The national sites of the tomb of Adam, Melchizedek’s altar, Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, Zechariah’s martyrdom, and Christ casting out the moneychangers were all transferred from the Temple to the Holy Sepulcher. It also contained a number of Temple-based relics, such as the ring by which Solomon bound the demons to help build the Temple, the silver bowls in which Solomon sealed these demons, and the horn containing the oil for anointing the Israelite kings.”

The ritual of “Holy Light” performed at the Holy Sepulcher adapts ceremonies from the Day of Atonement: On Easter Saturday, “the Orthodox Patriarch enters the Tomb alone . . . and emerges with a miraculously lit candle that is used to light hundreds of candles in the church.”

Justinian’s Hagia Sophia was also a new temple; “Solomon, I have outdone you,” Justinian is supposed to have boasted when he first entered the church. The similarities are numerous: walls of gold, a golden altar, golden vessels and lampstands. There is an “ablution basin” described as a “sea” ( thalassa ), and was connected with sets of twelve animals. Panegyrists celebrated the Hagia Sophia as “a vast and most glorious Temple . . . an earthly heaven . . . which amazes even the Seraphim . . . If God should ever condescend to abide in a ‘house made with hands,’ this surely is that House.”