A temple (from the Latin word templum) is a structure reserved for religious or spiritual activities, such as prayer and sacrifice, or analogous rites. A ‘'templum constituted a sacred precinct as defined by a priest, or augur. It has the same root as the word “ template, a plan in preparation of the building that was marked out on the ground by the augur. Though a templum Fact: date=October 2008, technically speaking, is not a “house of the gods” but a diagram that for the Romans linked the geometries of heaven and earth, it was also indicative of a dwelling place of a god or gods. This tradition dates back to prehistoric times.Fact: date=October 2008 For the ancient Egyptians, the word pr could refer not only to a house, but also to a sacred structure since it was believed that the gods resided in houses. The word ‘temple' (which dates to about the 6th century BCE Fact: date=October 2008), despite the specific set of meanings associated with the religion of the ancient Rome, has now become quite widely used to describe a house of worship for any number of religions and is even used for time periods prior to the Romans.

Ancient Near East

main: Ziggurat The oldest known temple seems to be that found at Göbekli Tepe in southeastern Turkey, dating from the 10th millennium BC.

Jewish synagogues and temples

In Judaism, the ancient Hebrew texts refer not to temples, the word having not existed yet, but to a "sanctuary", "palace" or "hall". Each of the two ancient Temples in Jerusalem was called Beit Hamikdash, which translates literally as "the Holy House".

The Temple Mount in Jerusalem is the site where the First Temple of Solomon and the Second Temple were built. At the center of the structure was the Holy of Holies where only the high priest could enter. The Temple Mount is now the site of the Islamic shrine, the Dome of the Rock (c. 690).

The Greek word synagogue came into use to describe Jewish places of worship during Hellenistic times and it, along with the Yiddish term shul, and the original Hebrew term Bet Knesset ("House of meeting") are the terms in most universal usage.

From the beginning of the nineteenth century, the word ‘temple' began to be used, almost exclusively by the followers of Reform Judaism, first in Germany, then in other countries,espescially in the United States, as in Temple Beth-El. The word refers not to Roman temples, but to the Temple of Solomon. Orthodox Judaism considers this usage inappropriate, as it does not consider synagogues a replacement for the Temple in Jerusalem (there were local places of worship contemporaneous with the existence of the Temple, e.g. the one that can be seen at Masada).