Religious narrative · Cities & buildings
Ask what I shall give thee
Gibeon · undated narrative
In Gibeon the LORD appeared to Solomon in a dream by night: and God said, Ask what I shall give thee.
Open this dream in the galaxy →
- Source
- The Bible, King James Version — Various, 1611. 1 Kings 3:5
- Record type
- Religious narrative
- Place
- Gibeon · Hebrew Bible
- Date
- undated narrative
- Uncertainty
- High — Religious narrative; not a historical dream report.
- Imagery
- Ruler · A stranger · Temple
- Feelings
- Awe
How traditions have read this kind of dream
Psychological
Houses, corridors and endless stairs are frequent dream settings. Some writers read buildings as figures for the self; others note simply that dreams rebuild the spaces we move through every day.
cf. Stevenson, A Chapter on Dreams (1888)
Mythological
Labyrinths, towers and underground cities appear in myths from Crete to Babel — built places where people lose their way, reach too high, or find hidden kingdoms.
Greek myth; Genesis 11
Chinese traditions
Tang tales like “The Governor of Nanke” place a whole kingdom of palaces inside a dream, only to reveal it as an ants’ nest — a lasting image for the brevity of worldly glory.
Li Gongzuo, c. 802
These are cultural lenses, not a diagnosis.
Dreams that share its images
- A lying dream in the likeness of Nestor Troy (setting) · c. 8th century BCE
- A spirit passed before my face Land of Uz · undated narrative
- The third day hence to fertile Phthia Athens, Greece · 399 BCE
- Evensong without light England · before 1911
- A young man with wings over Asia and Europe Land of the Massagetae (Central Asia) · 530 BCE (as told)
- Swallowing a burned book of Go Chang’an, China · c. 873