Jerusalem in the time of Jesus

ANOTHER PIECE ON ANCIENT JERUSALEM is posted at Crosswalk.com:

Discovering the Jerusalem From the Time of Jesus

Ariel Ben Ami, Travelujah
Tuesday, February 21, 2012

What did Jerusalem look like in Jesus' days? For most of Christian history, this question remained shrouded in mystery.

When the Temple and city were destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D., the ruins remained buried for nearly two millennia -- even after the Jewish people began to return to the Land of Israel at the end of the nineteenth century. During the War of Independence (1948), the Jewish Quarter of the Old City was largely destroyed by the Jordanians and it remained off limits to Jews for 19 years, until Israel retook the Old City during the Six Day War (1967).

After the Six Day War, during the renovation of the Jewish Quarter (1967-82), the ancient site was uncovered, revealing spectacular finds: a luxurious Second Temple-period residential quarter in the Upper City of Jerusalem. Because of its grandeur and opulence, it was renamed the Herodian Quarter, also known today as the Wohl Museum of Archeology.

In the days when Jesus came up to Jerusalem every year to celebrate the Jewish festivals, the wealthy aristocratic and priestly families lived in the magnificent houses of the Herodian Quarter. It is easy to see why this area, built on a hillside overlooking the nearby Temple Mount, would have been particularly attractive to priests who ministered in the Temple every day.

Today, this is the largest and most important site from Second Temple times that can still be seen in Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter. Perhaps even some of the priests and Sadducees whom the Gospels recall as disputing with Jesus, lived in these houses.

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Also published in the Jerusalem Post, but the Crosswalk version has an additional photo. A nice companion to the Haaretz piece on Aelia Capitolina.