Devlog 004: Building the Holy Place

Tonight the Holy Place went up in grey box: simple shapes, true to scale, before any final art. This is where Segment 1, “Sent,” ends: Gabriel standing “at the right side of the altar of incense” (Luke 1:11).

Measured from the sources

Every size comes from the Mishnah (tractate Middot) and Josephus, at 52.5 cm to the cubit, and every one is logged with its source.

• The Holy Place: 40 cubits long, 20 wide and 40 high, with the altar of incense, the table and the lampstand.
• The veil: two curtains a cubit apart before the Most Holy Place, as the Mishnah describes the Second Temple.
• Outside: the porch, the twelve steps with their level spaces, the altar of burnt offering, the courts, and the whole congregation praying outside (Luke 1:10).
• Gabriel’s spot: the north side of the altar, Zechariah’s right as he faces the veil. Luke doesn’t say which side; that’s our reading, and it’s labeled as ours.
• The hour: the sun stands where it would at the ninth hour, about 3 p.m. (Acts 3:1). The Temple faces east, so at that hour its porch is in shade and the courts are in sun.

Checked against the text

We checked every source against the actual text. Where the Mishnah said we were wrong, we rebuilt. “All the steps in the Temple were half a cubit high with a tread of half a cubit” (Middot 2:3), so the fifteen steps up from the Court of the Women now rise in half-circles, “like the half of a threshing floor” (Middot 2:5). Every choice that’s ours and not the sources’ is written down as ours.

Tonight’s passage

Luke 1:14–25: Gabriel tells Zechariah what his son will be, Zechariah asks “How can I be sure of this?”, and he is silent until the day it comes to pass.

Next

Where we stopped: play the path from the Court of Israel to Gabriel’s spot, review the blockout, play it again, set up the first Steam camera shots, then Gabriel’s flight and playing as Gabriel. The Gate of Nicanor comes once we’ve checked Josephus’s description of it (Jewish War 5.5.3).