Just want to bookmark this thing about Jachin and Boaz, the pillars of Solomon’s Temple. Hm, just thought of two things to look up: (1) if the pillars of Hercules are in any way connected to the pillars of Solomon’s Temple; (2) if theres any connection to the Egyptian djed, or the pillar of Osiris in Egyptian Temples.

Whoa! And the diagrams on this other thing are just so fantastically weird.

Also, this is an interesting thing about how the Phoenicians built Solomon’s Temple for him. Here’s an interesting quote from it:

The Hebrews originally had “judges” not kings. They instituted kings while they were trying to conquer southern Phoenicia because they saw that the Phoenicians and Philistines (Palestinians) were more effective in battle as they had kings who provided strong central leadership.

This article is really good. And here’s a cool passage about the pillars of Phoenician temples:

There was a magnificent temple to Melqart/Baal right in the centre of Tyre. All Phoenician temples incorporated two pillars: originally a wooden one for Astarte and a stone one for Baal. According to the ancient historian Herodotus, the Tyrian temple had one emerald pillar and one of gold. The emerald one may have been green Phoenician glass though given the wealth of Tyre may well have actually been emerald. It had a candle inside so that it shone at night: the green obviously symbolises a tree so the emerald pillar must have represented Astarte’s wooden column. The gold one symbolised the wealth given by the earth, gold being then the most precious metal to come out of stone, just as it is now.