Holy of Holies
According to the Hebrew Bible, the Ark contained the Ten Commandments, which were given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai.
As a part of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, the Holy of Holies was situated somewhere on Temple Mount; its precise location in the Mount being a matter of dispute, with some classical Jewish sources identifying its location with the Foundation Stone, which sits under the Dome of the Rock shrine.
[1][2] Other Jewish scholars argue that contemporary reports would place the Temple to the north or to the east of the Dome of the Rock.
A related term is debir, transliterated in the Septuagint (Koinē Greek: δαβιρ, romanized: dabir),[5] which either means the back (i.e. western) part of the Sanctuary,[6] or derives from the verb stem ד־ב־ר "to speak", justifying the translation in the Vulgate as oraculum, which the traditional English translation "oracle" (KJV, 1611) derives from.
Upon completion of the dedication of the Tabernacle, the Voice of God spoke to Moses "from between the Cherubim" (Numbers 7:89).
According to both Jewish and Christian traditions, Aaron's rod and a pot of manna were also in the ark.
[13] When Titus captured the city during the First Jewish–Roman War, Roman soldiers took down the curtain and used it to wrap therein golden vessels retrieved from the Temple.
According to the Babylonian Talmud Tractate Yoma, the Kodesh Hakodashim (Holy of Holies) is located in the center of the esplanade from a North–South perspective, but significantly to the West from an East–West perspective, with all the major courtyards and functional areas lying to its east.
The Talmud supplies additional details, and describes the ritual performed by the High Priest.
[citation needed] While under normal circumstances, access to the Holy of Holies was restricted to the High Priest and only on Yom Kippur, the Talmud suggests that repair crews were allowed inside as needed but were lowered from the upper portion of the room via enclosures so that they only saw the area they were to work on.
[4] Most Orthodox Jews today completely avoid climbing up to Temple Mount, to prevent them from accidentally stepping on any holy areas.
[18] A few Orthodox Jewish authorities, following the opinion of the medieval scholar Maimonides, permit Jews to visit parts of the Temple Mount known not to be anywhere near any of the sanctified areas.
To avoid religious conflict, Jewish visitors caught praying or bringing ritual objects are usually expelled from the area by police.
[19] According to the ancient apocryphal Lives of the Prophets, after the death of Zechariah ben Jehoiada, the priests of the Temple could no more, as before, see the apparitions of the angels of the Lord, nor could make divinations with the Ephod, nor give responses from the Debir.
Reproducing in Latin the Hebrew construction, the expression is used as a superlative of the neuter adjective sanctum, to mean "a thing most holy".
A notable example is for the Chiesa di San Lorenzo in Palatio ad Sancta Sanctorum, a chapel in the complex of St John Lateran in Rome.
[26] Because in Hebrews, God commands Moses to make sure that all things according to the pattern shewed to thee in the Mount Sinai (Heb 8:2, 5).
[25] Seventh-Day Adventism (SDA) believes that just as the high priest completed the special ministry on Yom Kippur and blessed the Israelites.
