Texts in Conversation
The Dream of Gudea and Ezekiel both describe temples revealed by divine figures. In Gudea the gods give a plan for building, and in Ezekiel a heavenly guide measures a future temple. Both follow a tradition where divine beings direct temple design.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Gudea Cylinders A iv 20
The Dream of Gudea; Building of Ningirsu's Temple
Ancient Near East, Sumerian
13 you are the mistress of the lands! O mother, let me relate now the dream: 14 In the heart of the dream there was a man: like heaven was his stature, 15 like earth was his stature; 16 as to the crown of his head, a god was he; 17 at his side was the storm-bird; 18 at his feet was the hurricane; 19 at his right and at his left a lion lay couched. 20 He commanded me to build his temple, 21 yet I do not understand who he is. 22 Daylight rose for me over the horizon.
Date: 2125 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Ezekiel 40:2
Hebrew Bible
1 In the twenty-fifth year of our exile, at the beginning of the year, on the tenth day of the month, in the fourteenth year after the city was struck down, on this very day, the hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me there. 2 By divine visions he brought me to the land of Israel and placed me on a very high mountain, and on it was a structure like a city, to the south. 3 When he brought me there, I saw a man whose appearance was like bronze, with a linen cord and a measuring stick in his hand. He was standing in the gateway. 4 The man said to me, “Son of man, watch closely, listen carefully, and pay attention to everything I show you, for you have been brought here so that I can show it to you. Tell the house of Israel everything you see.” 5 I saw a wall all around the outside of the temple. In the man’s hand was a measuring stick 10½ feet long. He measured the thickness of the wall as 10½ feet and its height as 10½ feet.
Date: 6th century BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... G. Buchanan Gray suggested that the vision of the new Temple in the Jerusalem to come, described in Ezekiel 40–43, might have been influenced by similar Babylonian visions. Gray mentioned Gudea’s dream, wherein the gods reveal to the king the plan of the Temple, in accordance with which he then builds it ... In a series of lectures, Hugo Gressmann discussed the Babylonian background of Ezekiel’s vision of the New Jerusalem (Ezekiel 40–48). He pointed out that the building plan of the Temple was revealed to King Gudea of Lagaš (2200 BCE) in a dream, while it was revealed in a vision to Ezekiel (40:2). Both would, therefore, reflect an ancient Near Eastern literary topos ..."
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