GATE, THE BEAUTIFUL (ἡ ̔Ωράια πύλη or θύρα, G2598, the beautiful gate, or door). A gate in Herod’s Temple, q.v.

Whereas the “Beautiful Gate” of the NT Temple is known only from Acts 3, the phrase prob. refers to that entrance way, famous for its imported Corinthian bronze doors, which was the only E gate from the surrounding Court of the Gentiles into the Court of the Women (Jos. War. V. 5. 3). It was once identified with the single E gate that led from the Kidron Valley, through the outer wall and “Solomon’s Porch,” into the Court of the Gentiles—a fact that may account for the name of the later entrance way, now itself sealed up, that was built over it and called “Porta Aurea” (Ωράια), the “Golden Gate.”

After Pentecost, a man lame from his mother’s womb, was laid daily at the Beautiful Gate to ask for alms, and was miraculously healed by Peter and John in the name of Jesus Christ (Acts 3:2, 10).

Bibliography J. Simons, Jerusalem in the OT (1952), 371; A. Parrot, The Temple of Jerusalem (1957), 85-88.