ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to examine the proportions of ancient synagogues. Most of the background is already behind us. The floors of synagogues with their sanctuary mosaics proclaim that the synagogue represented the heavenly Temple. The heavenly Temple is not part of the sensible world, but of the intellectual world, and is therefore an invisible 'idea'. But Plato had said that if a person wanted to consider the 'ideas', or the 'thoughts of God' which constituted the truth, he would do well to meditate on numbers, since these had an existence both in the sensible and the intellectual worlds. Philo, the Jew living in Alexandria, elaborated this teaching into a meditation on sCriptural numbers. Among other things he meditated on the measurements of the Tabernacle, since this was a likeness of the true dwelling of God. In fact the cubit measurements of the Tabernacle are simple, and those of Ezekiel's Temple only slightly more complex. These two sets of numbers had the same doctrinal value, in that both the Tabernacle and the Temple were copies of the heavenly Temple.
