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Door (2)

Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament

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DOOR (θύρα, cf. θυρωρός, ‘doorkeeper,’ ‘porter’).—The word ‘door’ is frequently found in the Gospels, sometimes in the literal, often in the figurative sense.

1. We need, first, to get clearly in mind the meaning of the term in Oriental usage. By ‘door’ is usually meant the outside or entrance ‘doorway,’ but often the ‘door’ in distinction from the ‘doorway,’ the frame of wood, stone, or metal that closes the doorway. The outside of the Oriental house has little ornament or architectural attractiveness of any kind. The ‘door,’ however, and the projecting ‘window’ above it, are exceptions to this rule. The doors, windows, and doorways are often highly ornamented (Isaiah 54:12, Revelation 21:21), enriched with arabesques, and, if to-day it be the house of a Moslem, the door will have sentences from the Koran inscribed upon it (cf. Deuteronomy 6:9). The ‘doors’ are usually of hard wood, studded with nails, or sometimes covered with sheet-iron. They are often very heavy. They invariably open inwards, and are furnished on the inside with strong bars and bolts. They have usually wooden locks, which are worked by wooden keys of such size that they could make formidable clubs (Isaiah 22:22, cf. Land and Book, i. 493). There is an opening in the door for the insertion of the hand and the introduction of the key from the outside, the lock being reached only from the inside. On entering the ‘door’ there is usually a vestibule, where, in daytime, the ‘doorkeeper’ is found, and where the master often receives the casual visitor (cf. Genesis 19:13; Genesis 23:10; Genesis 34:30 and Job 29:7).

The ‘doors’ leading into the ‘rooms’ or ‘chambers’ that open upon the court are not usually supplied with locks or bolts; a curtain, as a rule, being all that separates one of these ‘chambers’ from the ‘court,’ the idea being that all is private and secure within the outer gate (cf. Deuteronomy 24:10, Acts 10:17; Acts 12:13).

The ‘doorway’ consists of three parts: the threshold or sill (sometimes used for ‘door’), the two side-posts, and the lintel (Exodus 12:7 f.). The doors of ancient Egypt, and probably of contemporary nations, swung upon vertical pintles which projected from the top and bottom of the door into sockets in the lintel and threshold respectively. The commonest form of door had the pintle in the middle of the width, so that, as it opened, a way was afforded on each side of it for ingress or egress.

Occasionally we find that the ‘chamber,’ or private room, had its own door and fastenings. In Matthew 6:6, ‘When thou hast shut thy door,’ the word used means not only closed, but fastened it—giving the idea of complete privacy. See art. Closet. In Matthew 25:10, ‘the door was shut,’ it is clearly the outside or entrance-door that is meant. When this one outer door was shut, all communication with the outside world was cut off. Then nothing but persistent knocking at this door, and loud entreaty, would succeed in securing even a hearing. In this case the appeal was made to the bridegroom himself, who, to this day, is considered in the East sovereign of the occasion.

2. When Jesus said, ‘I am the door’ (John 10:9), He clearly meant to exclude every other form or means of mediation. But through Him there is an unhindered entering into and going out of the fold (cf. Numbers 27:17).

3. When it is said that Joseph, ‘a rich man of Arimathaea,’ begged the body of Jesus, laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock, and rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb (Matthew 27:60, Mark 16:3), we have a reference to a unique kind of door. The great roll-stone is often mentioned in the Talmud, but only in describing interments of the dead (Keim). It was clearly designed to protect the dead bodies and the other contents of the tomb from robbers, petty thieves, and birds and beasts of prey. One large tomb is now shown half a mile north of Jerusalem, which has a huge circular stone, like a great millstone on edge, cut from the solid rock, together with the channel in which it revolves. There are signs that it was originally furnished with a secret fastening, doubtless to protect the contents—spices, costly linen, jewellery, etc., against plunder. The ‘Tomb of Mariamne,’ recently uncovered south of the city, and the so-called ‘Tomb of Lazarus’ at Bethany, likewise have doors with similar ‘roll-stones’ (cf. art. Tomb). See also artt. Court, House.

Geo. B. Eager.