Literary notes about Altar (AI summary)
The word "altar" in literature is employed both as a tangible structure for religious rites and as a potent symbol of transformation, commitment, and sacrifice. In sacred narratives, it is portrayed as the locus of divine offerings and ritual acts—instructions for building one in holy texts ([1], [2], [3], [4])—while in narrative fiction it serves as a backdrop for moments of union, loss, and internal change, highlighting the emotional stakes of its proceedings ([5], [6], [7]). Its varied depictions—from grand, meticulously built edifices to more humble or even metaphorical constructs ([8], [9], [10])—demonstrate the term’s flexibility in evoking both physical and symbolic sanctuaries where human drama and divine presence intersect.
- And the angel of the Lord commanded Gad to tell David, to go up, and build an altar to the Lord God in the thrashingfloor of Ornan the Jebusite.
— from The Bible, Douay-Rheims, Complete - Thou shalt make also an altar to burn incense, of setim wood.
— from The Bible, Douay-Rheims, Complete - And he measured the court a hundred cubits long, and a hundred cubits broad foursquare: and the altar that was before the face of the temple.
— from The Bible, Douay-Rheims, Complete - And Solomon stood before the altar of the Lord, in the sight of the assembly of Israel, and spread forth his hands towards heaven, 8:23.
— from The Bible, Douay-Rheims, Complete - Why, she has run twice from you, from the very altar rails, as it were.
— from The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Yet we met; and fate bound us together at the altar, and I never spoke of passion nor thought of love.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition by Edgar Allan Poe - But that heart is already laid on a sacred altar: the fire is arranged round it.
— from Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë - And the altar itself was not solid, but hollow, of boards, and empty within.
— from The Bible, Douay-Rheims, Complete - Out of a similar sideboard, properly draped with white napery and imitation lace, the Bishop had constructed the altar which decorated his oratory.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo - Under an altar by the door was a pair of stone stocks for human legs.
— from The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain
