Was there once a great Jewish temple on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount? Yes. Does any scholar genuinely doubt there was? No, say archaeologists who have spent their lives studying Jerusalem. "I feel stupid even having to comment on it," says Dr. Yuval Baruch, a leading Israeli archaeologist who has studied Jerusalem throughout his career." Demanding proof that the Temples stood on the Mount is like demanding proof that the ancient stone walls surrounding Jerusalem, which stand to this day, were the ancient stone walls surrounding Jerusalem," he adds.Excellent article that carefully and accurately collects the relevant evidence and the views of scholars. Regular readers of PaleoJudaica will already have seen most of the material, but it is very good to have it collected in one place in a traditional media article. One more excerpt:
The contention that there is no proof the Temples existed, let alone on the Mount, is an artifact of the recent Israeli-Arab conflict. Jewish, Christian and Muslim tradition has always held the Mount sacred and none queried the existence of the Temples. "A Brief Guide to al-Haram al-Sharif," published in English by the Supreme Muslim Council itself in 1925, states: "The site is one of the oldest in the world. Its sanctity dates from the earliest (perhaps from pre-historic) times. Its identity with the site of Solomon's Temple is beyond dispute. As well as being sacred to Jews, the hilltop plaza, which could go back as much as 5,000 years, is sacred to Muslims as the place from which the Prophet Mohammed ascended to heaven. No Muslim scholars would agree to be interviewed for this article.
[...]
Archaeologists cannot conclusively point to stones they know comprised the Second Temple, let alone the first one. But as Prof. Israel Finkelstein, a world-renowned expert on Jerusalem archaeology, spells out in an email to Haaretz, "There is no scholarly school of thought that doubts the existence of the First Temple."More on Professor Barkay's Temple Mount Sifting Project is here and links.
All the archaeologists Haaretz spoke with for this article believe that if Temple Mount could be excavated – which it never has been – such evidence would be found, even if many of the stones were repurposed over the centuries. But concrete finds definitively from the Temple exist in abundance, says Bar-Ilan University Prof. Gabriel Barkay, an archaeologist who has spent many years working in Jerusalem, and the area of Temple Mount in particular.
And this related article just came out in the Times of Israel: Ancient Temple Mount ‘warning’ stone is ‘closest thing we have to the Temple.’ Carved in bold Greek letters, 2,000-year-old Herodian inscription marked off the section of Jerusalem’s most sacred site where gentiles couldn’t go — and shows they were welcome elsewhere in holy area (ILAN BEN ZION).
“If we talk about the closest thing to the Temple we have,” said David Mevorach, senior curator of Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine Archaeology, “on the Temple Mount, this was closest.”Related post here.
Two millennia ago, the block served as one of several Do Not Enter signs in the Second Temple in Jerusalem, delineating a section of the 37-acre complex which was off-limits for the ritually impure — Jews and non-Jews alike. Written in Greek (no Latin versions have survived), they warned: “No foreigner may enter within the balustrade around the sanctuary and the enclosure. Whoever is caught, on himself shall he put blame for the death which will ensue.”
The blowback continues against that inaccurate and poorly presented article on the Jewish temples by Rick Gladstone which recently embarrassed the New York Times. More on it here and links.
