The book Zealot by Reza Aslan has a great description of the disgusting, fetid experience Jerusalem must have been. Stockyard doesn't begin to describe it.
question from readers: with all the animal sacrifices, wouldnt the temple smell worse than a stockyard?
by nowwhat? 14 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Simon
Yeah, and abattoir is not a nice place to visit, even a modern one.
But it wasn't like they had the populations we have now, you could easily manage a supply of livestock near a temple and have a great BBQ side-business going on.
"Donnair for a denairi ..."
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James Mixon
Good point, "temple smell worse than a stockyard". The Chicago stockyards you could smell it miles away.
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Cold Steel
Yes, that's why the Incense Trail existed, which traversed the Arabian Peninsula and ran along the Red Sea to Jerusalem. This trail had watering holes at regular intervals, and these were owned by tribes that also provided protection. Incense also found its way to Greece and Rome. Incense masked the blood and stable smells.
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careful
It would also have smelled like Burger King with all that beef sizzling on the altar. Maybe one smell worked against the other.
It is good to remember that such was the case in most, if not all, of the other ancient societies. In Homer's Iliad "hactaombs" (the sacrifice of groups of 100 animals, though probably not always to be taken literally at exactly 100) are mentioned regularly (for example, at 1.431-447, 2.306, 4.120). The only way people could eat fresh meat was to slaughter an animal and cook it right away. Since meat was not a regular part of most people's diet, it was offered to the masses at festivals/holidays/celebrations, and these were centered in the temple. The priests were the cooks, their assistants, the slaughter men. It wasn't just the Jews in Jerusalem. If you were an average Syrian, Babylonian, Greek, it was the same story.
Temples were also the banks since they were the most secure places in a city. Hence the common temple robbers, and the money changers Jesus threw out. Knowledge of the temples of antiquity helps one today appreciate why they were so important.