TABERNACLE: The term used in the Middle Ages for the outer vessel in which the host is preserved, the inner being named the pyx (see VESSELS, SACRED). The word also designates the baldaquin above the altar, and the ciborium (see ALTAR, II., 1, § 1).
TABERNACLE CONNECTION. See METHODISTS, I.,2.
The Tent (§ 1).
The Curtains (§ 2).
The Interior and its Furnishing (§ 3).
The Court and its Furnishing (§ 4).
Historicity of the Account (§ 5).
Conclusion; Later History (§ 6).
"Tabernacle" is the term used in the English versions of the Biblical account of the exodus to name the structure serving in the wilderness wanderings as the dwelling-place of God, to which the people assembled. It represents several Hebrew phrases-- 'ohel mo'edh, 'ohel Ha'edhuth, mishkan, mishkan ha'edhuth, which, translated literally, mean "tent of meeting," "tent of testimony," but it is not to be taken as a place in which men met. In structure it was a temple in the form of a tent.
The tent itself consisted of a wooden structure of acacia boards covered with curtains. The boards were forty-eight in number, each one ten cubits long and one and a half wide. They were distributed in such away that there were twenty boards each on the north side and the south side, eight boards at the west or rear; the front, on the east, remained open. Inasmuch as the boards were closely joined to make a real wall, the length of the structure was thirty cubits, the width twelve cubits, and the height, corresponding to the length of the boards, ten cubits. The boards were connected with each other and with the floor by tenons and sockets. The sockets were of silver, and each board had two such sockets, i.e., probably holes into which the tenons were put. The rear wall had, besides the six boards that were like the others, two corner boards of a different kind, but it is not clear from Ex. xxvi. 24 wherein their peculiarity consisted. The boards were fastened together with five bars for each side that were thrust through rings of gold; the boards were covered with gold, as were the bars, which were made of acacia wood.
This wooden structure became a "tabernacle" or "tent" only through the curtains spread over it (Ex. xxvi. 1 sqq., xxxvi. 8 sqq.) which were so essential to it that one of them, the byssus curtain, could be called the tabernacle (xxvi. 1, 6, etc.). The lowest covering, the so-called byssus curtain, consisted of ten pieces each twenty-eight cubits long and four wide, of twined byssus, therefore probably of white as the ground-color, interwoven with patterns of blue, purple, and scarlet cherubim. Five of these ten pieces were fastened together so as to make two large curtains twenty-eight cubits long and twenty cubits broad. Each of these curtains had fifty loops of purple yarn through which were thrust golden taches, fastening the whole into one covering. Over this curtain, to which the name "tabernacle" was given, there was spread for its protection a curtain of goats' hair, called "tent." It consisted of eleven pieces, each thirty cubits long and four wide, so connected as to make two curtains, one of five, the other of six of the smaller pieces. In the larger of these two the sixth piece was to be doubled in the forefront of the tabernacle. These were coupled together by the fifty loops on
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TABORITES. See Huss, JOHN, HussITES, II., § § 3-7.
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