THE ARCANE SCHOOLS - Fort Myers Beach Masonic Lodge No. 362

the excavation which he was making a certain stone, on which the
ineffable
name of God was inscribed, and which stone he is said to have removed
and
deposited in the Holy of Holies. That King David laid the foundations
of
the temple upon which the superstructure was subsequently erected by
Solomon, is a favorite theory of the legend-mongers of the Talmud.
The masonic tradition is substantiallv the same as the Jewish, but it
substitutes Solomon for David, thereby giving a greater air of
probability
to the narrative; and it supposes that the stone thus discovered by
Solomon was the identical one that had been deposited in his secret
vault
by Enoch. This Stone of Foundation, the tradition states, was
subsequently
removed by King Solomon, and, for wise purposes, deposited in a secret
and
safer place.
In this the masonic tradition again agrees with the Jewish, for we find
in
the third chapter of the "_Treatise on the Temple_" written by the
celebrated Maimonides, the following narrative--
"There was a stone in the Holy of Holies, on its west side, on which
was
placed the ark of the covenant, and before it the pot of manna and
Aaron's
rod. But when Solomon had built the temple, and foresaw that it was, at
some future time, to be destroyed, he constructed a deep and winding
vault
under ground, for the purpose of concealing the ark, wherein Josiah
afterwards, as we learn in the Second Book of Chronicles, xxxv. 3,
deposited it, with the pot of manna, the rod of Aaron, and the oil of
anointing."
The Talmudical book "_Yoma_" gives the same tradition, and says that
"the
ark of the covenant was placed in the centre of the Holy of Holies,
upon a
stone rising three fingers' breadth above the floor, to be, as it were,
a
pedestal for it." "This stone," says Prideaux,[225] "the Rabbins call
the
Stone of Foundation, and give us a great deal of trash about it."
There is much controversy as to the question of the existence of any
ark
in the second temple. Some of the Jewish writers assert that a new one
was
made; others, that the old one was found where it had been concealed by
Solomon; and others again contend that there was no ark at all in the
temple of Zerubbabel, but that its place was supplied by the Stone of
Foundation on which it had originally rested.