The newly-formed Academy for Temple Studies is comprised of a relatively small — and growing — group of scholars, including Gary N. Anderson, John F. Hall, and John W. Welch, who are familiar with the work of Dr. Margaret Barker, and her approach to temple studies, and who have been working with Dr. Barker and Rev. Dr. Laurence Hemming for some time in starting an organization in the U.S. similar to the Temple Studies Group in the United Kingdom, and extending the discipline of temple studies to the United States.

The Academy for Temple Studies has as its objective the study and understanding of the ancient temple — as typified by the temple of Solomon in Jerusalem — and its antecedents and successors in various cultural settings, from deep antiquity to ancient Egypt to Israel, and later temple traditions. The Academy’s study will focus on both the physical temple and the teachings and rites of the temple, through the ages, in varied and diverse religious traditions.

Part of the Academy’s mission is to hold conferences which fall within the purview of its stated objectives, and to publish materials relevant to its mission, including occasional papers, the proceedings of its conferences, and a periodical.

What most impressed me last summer on my first and only expedition to Central America was the complete lack of definite information about anything. Never was so little known about so much. We knew ahead of time that of the knowledge of the ancient cultures there wasn’t much to be expected, but we were quite unprepared for the poverty of information that confronted us on the guided tours of ruins, museums, and lecture halls. It was not that our gracious guides knew less than they should. It is just a fact of life that no one knows much at all about these oft-photographed and much-talked-about ruins.

In the almost complete absence of written records, one must be permitted to guess, because there is nothing else to do; and when guessing is the only method of determination, one man’s skill is almost as good as another’s. An informed guess is a contradiction of terms, so our initial shock of nondiscovery was tempered by a warm glow of complacency on finding that the rankest amateur in our party was able to pontificate on the identity and nature of most objects as well as anybody else.

One would suppose it to be a relatively easy thing to decide whether a given structure had served as a hospital, a monastery, a palace, a storeroom, a barracks, a temple, a tomb, or an office. But it is not easy at all, with everything stripped completely bare and all the interiors looking just alike. Usually, we do not even know who the builders were or what their names were or where they came from.