This article analyzes for the first time the architectural implications of the Talmud, a multivolume religious text composed between the second and sixth centuries of the first millennium. The Talmud has extensive commentaries on specifically Jewish structures such as the Sukkah, Eruv, and Mikveh, as well as on everyday buildings and public places used by Jews. Moreover, the Talmud substituted for monumental architecture during the many centuries when the Jewish people had no homeland and were subject to frequent persecutions and exiles. The architecture of Talmud, therefore, can be analyzed in two critical arenas: first, through its numerous and detailed rules and recommendations for the practice of building; and, second, amid its creation of a textual discourse whose form and character is based in large part on the memory of the destroyed Temple and lost homeland.

Karl Bötticher is best known for his landmark theory of architectural tectonics. In the 1840s, Bötticher proposed an integrated system of architectural expression, based first on considerations of plan and structure, and then on the symbolism of structure in ornamental forms. Fearful that philosophical aesthetics was leading architecture into purposeless immateriality and a dependence on extrinsic aims, Bötticher interpreted ornament as the communication of themes intrinsic to building. In a historical sense, Bötticher envisioned a medievalist armature of material and structural forces represented by an explanatory language of Greek ornamental forms. This reformulation of aesthetic ideas, coupled with his related advocacy for the visible expression of iron structure, had great significance for the pursuit of a system of architectural knowledge in modern Germany.