Imagining the Temple in Rabbinic Stone: The Evolution of the ʾEven Shetiyah

Abstract

The mythical ʾeven shetiyah, often translated as the “foundation stone,” marks the physical place where the Jerusalem temples once stood in the rabbinic imagination. In its earliest incarnation it identified the place where the ark of the covenant resided in Solomon's Temple. Over the centuries it absorbed cosmogonic and eventually eschatological meaning. In later post-talmudic rabbinic literature, it adopted another mythic trope—the seal on thetehom. I argue that these two separate narrative strands of a seal on thetehomunderthe Temple and ʾeven shetiyahinthe Temple became intertwined, but only in late (post-talmudic) rabbinic midrash. I trace this evolutionary trend and argue that while the early rabbis both innovated and reinvigorated older biblical and ancient Near Eastern cosmogonic motifs with their ʾeven shetiyah, the later rabbinic texts were influenced by Christian and Muslim competition for spiritual and earthly Jerusalem. The stone that started as a means for rabbinic self-authorization became a reassertion of God's control of history and protection of Israel and the world, but in the process displaced priestly authority.