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My father, Alec Garrard, was a farmer who had built a model of Herod's Temple in a barn in East Anglia, England. His research was meticulous. He was insistent that his model be historically accurate, at times taking apart what he had made and rebuilding it to fit with the latest research findings of archaeologists in Israel. He had visitors from around the world to see his temple, Christians, Jews and agnostics, archaeologists and students, as well as the general public.
His achievement was not in words, or in books, but in the model of the temple itself. He had worked all his life with his hands, making and mending, painting and model making, and the Tempe is a 3D manifestation of his reading and research. It is populated with little models of people, animals, Romans legions, and reconstructed artifacts. He was visited at one point by W.G. Sebald, who included a photograph of part of the model Temple in his book 'The Rings of Saturn.' The Herod's Temple he found in East Anglia was both real and not real, a model that existed for something that was long gone and could no longer even be called a memory, but is non the less mourned by the many Jews who visit the Western Wall in Jerusalem, the only remaining part of the original Temple outer walls.
Sebald turned my father into Thomas Abrams in his book. When he was alive, Alec said he had as many phone calls from people wanting to talk to the real 'Thomas Abrams', as the real Alec Garrard, many of them from America.
This new book tells some stories of Herod’s Temple, both the model and the real first century Temple that the Romans destroyed.
© Linda Jane James. All rights reserved.